An Object Lesson
by amitai
Summary: Everyone in Alex's school has thought him a bit wimpy, ever since his uncle died, and he started spending more and more time off school... with no good excuse. How will they react when they find out just how wrong they were? COMPLETE
1. Chapter 1

Well - the last Alex Rider story I posted hasn't had much of a response; well, it was kinda rushed, though I think it's going to get better. Not that good a story,at the moment, in any case.The summary also wasn't great, but hey - I'm not very good at writing summaries. I'll deal. In any case, I've re-written it, so hopefully it'll be better...

This is going to be quite short - hopefully five or six chapters at the most. On the other hand, I think this is going to be the shortest of them; the rest will all cover quite a lot of stuff in each chapter. It aims to be in the same sort of style as the books - whether or not I've actually acheived that, you'll have to tell me! The next chapter is already written... and I'm holding out until I get enough reviews (five or ten - I'm still deciding. I'm a pretty easy-going sort of person; it'll probably be five... ;-) but that, of course will depend on how popular the story is...). So if you like it, there's a little button at the bottom of the page. Please tell me.

DISCLAIMER: I own all six of the Alex Rider books - in paper back. The spines are a bit broken, but if you really want them...

This story takes into account everything that happens in the books up to St. Dominic's Hospital - so most of Ark Angel didn't happen. Sorry to all the fans of Ark Angel out there - it just didn't fit. Scorpia couldn't have moved on from it's failure yet, orthis part of the storywouldn't make sense.

* * *

The men and woman who sat around the table were some of the most lethal in the world. Not only were they themselves dangerous – though they were – they masterminded and implemented some of the most daring and deadly schemes in the world. They had had a hand in many of the foremost terrorist organisations in the world; they had worked for them. Their organisation was not a terrorist organisation – it implemented terror, but strictly on a cash basis.

These were people who had taken mercenary and made it an art form.

Julia Rothman had been replaced by a cold eyed, heavy jawed woman whose name was, incongruously, Dorothea Sweete. Dorothea Sweete had worked for Scorpia for years; her skill as a killer was only surpassed by her skill as a tactician, and she had several years of experience as one of the high-powered second-in-commands. And at the moment, the nine top members of Scorpia were discussing the shortcomings of their last operation.

A silence had fallen over the room as they contemplated what had happened; a silence vaguely reminiscent of the complete hush of a funeral parlour. The people in that windowless room in the Ca'Vedova knew how to stay silent for hours. Had they not been breathing, nothing would have given away that they were still alive.

Finally, it was the nameless Australian (who was occasionally called James Sloane, by the few members of his family he had left alive) who spoke up, in a curt, cold voice, straight to the point. "We were foolish to allow Mrs. Rothman's vendetta against the Rider family to obscure our view of Alex Rider."

"You think he could be useful?"

"Not so much that – though yes, he could have been." The Australian paused, weighing the value of one word against another. "We… allowed her to colour our perception. It was dangerous; she underestimated Rider, so we did too. Equally, we let her obsession with seeing the boy die take over from the main task, Invisible Sword. She engineered it so the he would be there, rather than engineering him so that he would be there. It was a foolish mistake."

"What do you suggest we do?" This was Dr. Three. He spoke in almost perfect English, though he had a slight softness around the 'l's of his speech – and also the 'r's. There was a tendency that he had to elongate certain vowels, but even despite that, had you heard him speaking without seeing his face, it would have been difficult to say for certain what nationality he was. "We cannot change anything, and our customer has withdrawn his offer. Invisible Sword is obsolete. We cannot recruit Rider now; MI6 will have told him the truth, and in any case, we hired a contract killer to get rid of him, and he is not going to trust those who tried to kill him. Twice, no less. And those who killed his father."

"Julia was a fool about Rider from the beginning." Dorothea Sweete said, harshly from her corner of the table. All eyes swivelled to her, the newcomer in their midst, but she shrugged, indifferent to their scrutiny. "John Rider, I mean. I was her assistant at the time; for a clever woman, she made a fool of herself over him."

It was another characteristic unique to Scorpia – all assistants were alternated. None of the top nine members kept the same secretary or personal assistants for longer than three months at a time – it was an insurance against anyone knowing too much, as well as to stop any workplace relationships. The top nine members needed no relaxation time. For them, business _was_ pleasure.

"She couldn't get revenge from John – but she would have Alex. Not only was he not her son, she would never forgive John Rider for not being who he said he was, and she needed revenge for that. All of us here can understand revenge."

"Revenge for lying to her, you mean?"

"Yes."

"His son – Alex – he wasn't lying to her. Why kill him, when he could have been such an asset?" Julien Gouard, a Frenchman, had defected even before the Cold War, and worked for Stalin during the Purges. He knew all about the waste of talent – he had done a lot of the wasting.

"I was not Julia Rothman's psychiatrist." Dorothea Sweete shrugged. "I wasn't even her assistant when John Rider died."

"Of course. Apologies, Miss Sweete." She inclined her head.

"Thank you. Accepted."

There was another icy hush.

"I think," said Dr. Three, dropping his words like lumps of ice into the cold, heavy silence, "That we need to teach Alex Rider an object lesson."

"We did a deal with MI6." Masayuki Nohmura said, softly. Everything he said was soft. He had been tortured at some point during his life, and the screaming had left him with a voice that barely went above a whisper. On the other hand, he was a world wide language expert, being conversant in over fifteen, and able to translate a further seven. While not strictly a terrorist, his torture, besides affecting his voice, had left him with a hatred of all spying organisations, who, he felt, had turned their back on him. He had been left with his captors for three years. "We said that we would leave him alone."

"And all such deals are honoured, of course." Dr. Three sneered at him. Nohmura shrugged.

"He is only a boy." He said. Dr. Three rolled his eyes at this display of sentimentality.

"Yes. Just a boy. A child." Levi Kroll had taken that statement quite a different way, and his eye lit up as he worked out what Dr. Three was suggesting. "A lesson on him would be a most effective way to show that we still have the power we had before, and we will still use it. We still look weak, after being bettered by a child… his mutilated body would be a perfect way to dispute that. A strong message."

"Indeed. But not only that. Invisible Sword was going to kill school children. We have lost the technology for that, alas," here, Dr. Three heaved a sigh, and a brief flicker of actual emotion scuttled across his face, but was gone in an instant – for a moment, it had looked almost like regret. "But we can still make a show of power; we may have lost status and face, but apart from that, we lack nothing else. We will regain both if we pull through on our promise of killing school children. And to both teach Alex Rider a lesson and regain our lost reputation, we should target…"

"Alex Rider's school?" it was Dorothea Sweete again. Her cold eyes had gained some animation as the talk went on.

"Alex Rider's school." Dr. Three agreed.

* * *

Like? Dislike? Hate with a passion? Want to laugh at Dorothea Sweete? Go on - indulge yourself...


	2. Chapter 2

OK - I gave up on the "I will have five or ten reviews before I update", mostly because I realised how much my summary sucked. I have changed the summary, and now give an upadate in exchange! There, aren't I generous? ;-)

I hope you like this; I think that it's OK, but it's never going to exactly be a work of art. Well, fanfiction isn't designed to be, is it? Sure, we should all try and do as well as we can, but if we were artists, or whatever, we'd be publishing stuff - wouldn't we?

All of you who do karate, please forgive me. I do a different martial art, and I don't have a clue what karate classes are like - I pretty much just gave a rough outline of one of my classes. You never know, I might get lucky; they might be exactly the same, which would be lovely, but probably just a little too lucky. I don't do luck... Equally, I'm not entirely sure where Mike came from - he's a little like my teacher, who is also small, and kind, but some of the things he says sound worryingly like my Greek teacher. And please, don't leave a review saying 'why on earth is he called MIKE? He's ASIAN! God..." Cos he's born in England, OK? He's English - passport, name, everything.

On the other hand, please leave a review...

DISCLAIMER: If I'd written Alex Rider, he'd be a geek. He's not. So I didn't.

Enjoy!

* * *

At that moment, Alex Rider was neither at school nor spying, but in a karate class. Since his spying with MI6 had started, he'd only had time for this class at irregular intervals and now, if MI6 were keeping their word about letting him chose the next time they met, he had better start learning again. Apart from anything, his doctor at St. Dominic's had said that he was pretty clean when it came it his bill of health, and he needed to get fit and healthy again. Alex had mentioned karate. The doctor had said it was perfect.

So here he was now, in the local sports hall, with a dozen or so other students all dressed in white with black belts. The coloured belt class had come and gone, and Alex had made his apologies to his instructor, and rejoined this one. They had worked through a fairly normal class – some line work, patterns, semi-free sparring, but now they were being partnered up for free sparring. Alex's heart was pumping at a ridiculous rate – quite apart from the fact he was, as he'd explained to his instructor, recovering from an operation (though he hadn't gone into any details), the last time he had "sparred" with someone, it had been less of a friendly match, and more outright war. He had the bruises to prove it. Scorpia didn't do things in half measures. He had the bullet scar to prove that.

His instructor, a short, good-humoured Asian man, rested his hand briefly on one of his shoulders as he passed.

"Take it easy, OK?" he said, and Alex jumped, startled out of his own thoughts, then realised that he was talking about his recent operation. To be honest, Alex hadn't noticed any pain apart from the deep, res

idual ache that he knew he was going to feel for the rest of his life. "Don't over do it."

"I won't." Alex said, smiling to reassure him. Then he pulled his attention back to his opponent, a boy a couple of years older than him, called Charlie. He was strong, but Alex knew from experience that he was quicker. In any case, it didn't really matter, assessing this boy. In five minutes, or even less, if Mike, the Instructor, decided it should be less, he would be facing a new different "enemy". It was a useful strategy – it got them all used to fighting people without the added pressure of it being a real fight. But Alex _had_ fought in real fights, and he couldn't quite forget that.

"Begin!"

They both assumed a guarding block, and circled each other, on their toes. Alex was the first to move, aiming a back fist strike to one of the boy's temples with such speed and ferocity that the boy had no hope of blocking it. It was only a chance move backwards that stopped it connecting, and possibly knocking him out, despite the headguard he was wearing.

"God, Alex, chill!" the other boy said, nervously. Alex bit his lip – this was what he'd been afraid of – he'd trained himself to fight properly, not spar with friends.

"Sorry."

Charlie made the next move, a front kick which Alex side-stepped, bringing a knife hand strike (gently) onto his neck.

"See, that's what I mean. Play nicely." Charlie grinned at the younger boy. He didn't quite like sparring with Alex. Sure, he liked Alex well enough, but there was something dangerous about him. Alex offered him a weak smile back.

Charlie tried his front kick again, and Alex, who had misinterpreted his preparation, made the wrong block. With a small shout of triumph, Charlie's foot connected squarely with Alex's chest. Alex dropped like a stone, mouth wide with a silent cry.

"Alex?" Charlie said, dropping to his knees beside him. "Alex?"

Mike was there in seconds. "What happened?" he asked, curtly.

"I don't know – I got a kick in to the chest, and he fell…"

"He said he'd just been operated on for appendicitis…" Alex had passed out from the pain, and Mike lifted the bottom of his suit top to see if anything had happened to the scar.

Except there was no scar.

"Where did you kick him?" he asked Charlie, in a gentler voice; the older student was white in the face. He pointed at Alex's chest.

"Around there…"

Mike pulled the low V-neck of the shirt down and to the left a little, and gaped. There, on his students chest, was the distinctive, puckered scarring of a bullet wound.

* * *

Alex came round ten minutes later, just as the class broke up. Mike had lain him down by one of the walls, covering him with somebody's coat, and putting one of the pads that they used when practicing a move under his head. All in all, Mike had done as much as he could, debated over taking him to hospital, then decided to wait until he could talk to Alex. If Alex wasn't awake by the end of the class, he would take him to hospital regardless. 

"Oh, Alex, hi." He said, as the boy walked up to him, slightly shaky. "Is everything alright?"

It was a loaded question; and Alex knew it. "Yes, thank you." He held out the coat. "Is this yours?"

Mike accepted it, and studied Alex's face closely. He turned away, pretending to clear some things away, realising it would be easier for Alex if he didn't have to maintain eye contact with him. "Are you going to tell me anything about how you got shot?"

Alex started. "What?" he asked, shocked.

"I saw the scar." Mike said, and turned back. "Why have you been absent so often, Alex? You barely missed a lesson for the first seven years, and now you're hardly here. What went wrong? And why did you get shot?"

Alex looked away. "I can't tell you." He said, in a quiet voice. I'm sorry."

Mike sighed. "I thought you might not be able to."

"Do you…" Alex swallowed. "Do you want me to leave?"

Mike looked hard at him for a few moments, then shook his head. "No. I think, whatever it is, you've been dealing with enough recently. But you take it easy, at least until that thing stops hurting, OK? Maybe you should sit out of free sparring for the first few months."

Alex looked up at him again. "I don't think it's ever going to stop hurting." He said, softly.

Mike gave him a sad look. "Maybe not. Maybe I should have said 'take it easy until you get used to the pain'."

"Yeah."

"OK. Well, this is none of my business." Mike said, standing up, "So I'm going to leave you alone, but make sure you recover, OK, Alex? You're one of my best students, and whatever you've been through, you're still good at this. So make sure you get better. Oh, talking of good students…" he bent down, and retrieved a flyer from his bag. "There's a competition on soon; d'you want to take part?"

"I can't spar anymore, Mike." Alex told him. "I, er… I was attacked, and whenever I spar, it's like I'm trying to really hurt someone now."

"Sure you can spar." Mike replied, smiling. "You'll get over that. It's happened to most of us. We panicked, and our body remembers the panic better than it remembers our training. It reacts in the way it would to the panic, you see? But training has a longer overall effect than panic, so eventually, it will wear down to the point were you can manage the panic, and still use your training. Do you see?"

Alex nodded, slowly. "I think so."

"Well, I guess that means you don't want to go in for the competition?" Alex shook his head. "Shame. Oh, well. I'll see you next week, yes?"

"I hope so."

Alex watched as his instructor left, carrying the miscellany that went with teaching a martial art. He sighed, and it echoed around and round the empty sports hall. With one last glance around the big, empty room, he left himself.

* * *

It was only a short walk back to Ian Rider's house in Chelsea. Sometimes, Alex thought that he would never think of it as home again – or even as his house. Ian Rider had filled it with his ideals, and his furniture, and himself. There was almost no room for Alex to make an imprint on it; but with Jack's help, it could at least feel welcoming. 

Jack was a godsend. She didn't ask too many questions, and she supported Alex no matter what. She was one of the few people who made Alex feel normal – her, and Tom Harris and his brother, who, despite knowing that he was a spy, never seemed to feel the need to mention it.

"I'm home!" he called.

Jack's head appeared through the kitchen door. "Heya." She greeted him. "How was your lesson?"

"Good, until I passed out." He made his way in to the kitchen, where she was cooking pasta.

"You _passed out_?" she came over to him, and laid a hand on his forehead. "Are you feeling all right?"

"Yeah – one of the other boys kicked me in the chest." He rubbed his scar absentmindedly through the thin cotton of his T-shirt. "It really hurt."

"I bet it did." Jack said, sharply. "You should go and see that doctor of yours – what's his name… Dr. Ferrara. Maybe ask him if you can have some more PT. After all, getting kicked in the same place as you've just been shot… that's no joke, Alex."

"I know." Alex muttered. "I was the one who got kicked."

Jack put her hands on her hips, and looked down at him, her expression going from annoyed to worried. "I'm sorry, Alex. I just don't know how to react anymore. I mean, you used to come home from that class happy, or annoyed cos you didn't do as well as you wanted to – and now you're coming home and telling me that you got kicked in the chest and passed out! I can't do anything to help you anymore, Alex. Until you start getting into the same scrapes as a normal teenager – you know, nothing involving shootings or global terrorism – I might as well be a non-speaking extra."

"I'm sorry." Alex apologised, honestly. "I don't mean to…"

"I know you don't." she said, smiling at him, and hugging him. "Now, if you lay the table, and get yourself a drink, Mama Starbright's pasta will be coming any moment."

"Your mum cooked a lot of pasta?"

"No, but we cook it exactly the same way. Four minute instant pasta with tomato sauce and butter. So I guess it is hers."

"And the rest of Italy's, sure."

"Oh, just get yourself a drink." But she was smiling. It felt reassuringly normal to be able to joke like this."

When they were sat down and eating, Jack said, cheerfully,

"So, if you're done passing out and getting shot, d'you want to go and see a film tomorrow, or something? I mean, it's Friday; what do you want to do tomorrow?"

Alex gave her an apologetic look. "I'm really behind at school, after, well… after everything." He said, quietly. "I think I'd better spend the weekend trying to catch up. Tom's coming round, to help me with it."

She grinned at him. "If Tom's coming round, you won't get any work done at all."

"Want to bet?" he asked, promptly.

"I don't bet." She laughed. "Not with you – you've proved me wrong every single time!"

* * *

By the time Monday came, Alex was feeling almost cheerful. He was well primed on everything they had covered that term, and Alex could still remember everything that Mr. Grey had taught him. He was actually feeling confident about school, which hadn't happened since his uncle had died. 

As he went in through the gates, he could see the changes. The science lab had been rebuilt – he felt a twinge of guilt go through him – and he was unsurprised to see that there seemed to be some sort of security checks around the medical centre. After what Scorpia had tried to do through injections, he would have been more surprised if there had been no reaction to it. Britain was cracking down on her medical security – and, Alex assumed, the Prime Minister was going to be paying rather more attention to MI6 and MI5 from now on.

The other thing was that people were looking at him, and whispering things. Alex shrugged. They knew nothing about him, and if they did – well, that could be equally as bad. Alex didn't want to find out what people's reaction would be to finding out he was a spy.

"Alex!" it was Tom shouting. "Hey, Alex!"

Tom waved him over to where he was standing with a circle of other boys in their year. Alex made his way over, but his entire body had become taut with tension. Tom, he knew, was not going to be a threat. Tom was a really good friend; but from what Tom had said of the rumours flying around about him, he wasn't so sure of his reception from the other boys.

"Alex."

"Hi."

"Wow, long time, no see." Were the surprisingly friendly greetings that he got.

"How's your 'appendicitis'?" One boy, Jack Miles, asked him, grinning conspiratorially. "Can we see the scar?"

For one, wild moment, Alex was really tempted to say, 'yeah, sure, why not?', and show them the scar from the bullet he'd taken in the chest. And then he felt Tom's eyes on him, worried yet intrigued and slightly hurt. He couldn't tell them. Tom would go mental, and the rest of them would freak.

"Haven't got a scar." He answered, trying to grin back. "They just gave me drugs."

"Bet you loved that." Jack said, winking at one of the others.

"Maybe." Alex shrugged, and pretended not to see, or understand, the wink. So that was another rumour, was it? That he was a drug addict? Alex almost laughed at that.

It was Tom who thankfully drew the attention away from Alex. "I was round at Alex's on Saturday." He said, with a grin. "And I asked to see the scar, too. But if he's got a scar anywhere on him, he's not sharing." At this, he gave Alex a vaguely wounded glance; Alex had refused to tell him what really happened.

Before it could get any more awkward, the bell rang for the beginning of lessons, and Alex followed the rest of the boys into the main school building. Despite his non-answers, they seemed to accept him easily enough. School children – except Alex – tend only to ask the questions they have to.

* * *

A few miles away, in a nondescript building someway away from Brooklands, just near enough to it to be practical to walk there, a man watched all of this on a large, flat Plasma screen. 

He worked for Scorpia – or he did at the moment. A few weeks before, he had been working for an Australian organisation who wanted a certain person closely watched before they disposed of him. Before that, a rich Indian businessman had hired him to spy on his wife, who he thought was having an affair.

The man specialised in integrated spy technology – bugs. Discovering other people's secrets is something which he had worked out a lot of people would pay highly to do, and he exploited that, earning huge sums of money at a time. This time, it just happened to be Scorpia paying him, and the primary target happened to a fair-haired fourteen year old school boy, known as Alex Rider. The secondary target was a busy inner-city comprehensive school.

The whole of Brooklands had been bugged by him over the weekend, the cheap school alarm system having been easily overridden. There were bugs in the lights, in the doorframes, even one in a door-handle; there were cameras watching everything. By the end of the week, this man would know all of the school's weak points, and all of Alex Rider's friends – all of his weak points, in fact. By the end of the fortnight, he would know the school routine, and, more specifically, Alex Rider's routine. All of this information would be passed on to Scorpia.

He smiled, and swivelled in his chair, and turned to a computer monitor he had installed, where nearly fifty tiny pictures were crammed onto the screen, a tiny arrow pointing outwards in one corner. He scanned then for Alex Rider, and when he couldn't find him, he clicked on the arrow. Another full screen of different tiny pictures appeared, with the same arrow in the bottom right hand corner. Finally, he located the boy, in the science schools. He clicked on that particular picture, and allowed it to fill the massive plasma TV screen behind him. Turning up the sound, he settled down to watch Alex Rider.

* * *

So - what'd you think? 

Oh, and to the people who did review, thank you very much!

**RiderAlex**: Thanks! Hope you like this one too!

**hpfan99: **Thank you, too - hopefully, this one was soon enough. And hopefully, you loved this one too - enough to tell me! ;-)


	3. Chapter 3

The computer is back! It's older, tireder and more rickety, and there are some really, REALLY annoying changes - it's on an American setting! AAAAAAAH!

No offence intended to any Americans, but what I mean by "American setting" is that the sign is now where the "'s used to be. I've had a computer like that before, but I've been using this one for four years now, and I'm not used to it. Quite frankly, it really just makes me want to cry. If you think I'm joking, trust me, I'm not. I HAVE been crying. I'm going back to boarding school tomorrow, my GCSE's are in a fortnight's time, and my computer has decided to Fck up. Wonderful. Anyone want a life swap?

Moving on.

DISCLAIMER: Nothing, surprisingly, has changed since the chapters before, except that now they're refusing even to consider my offer...

Hope you enjoy. Please tell me if you do...

* * *

The week was three days old by the time Alex started to feel that there was something wrong.

He had felt it the first day, and dismissed it – he'd been on edge, what with being back at school, and back in a normal routine, surrounded by children his own age, who, he knew, thought that he was something a bit odd. The second day, he had had the uncomfortable feeling that someone was watching him permanently, but whenever he looked round, somebody hurriedly looked away, so he had assumed that it was that.

But now his oddity had settled down a little, and no one was staring at him anymore. No one was paying him any out of the ordinary attention now, so it couldn't be that. What was it that was making him so jumpy? This was Brooklands – safe, pleasant Brooklands. Nothing could happen here.

And then he remembered where he'd last felt this uncomfortable, bug-under-a-microscope sensation. Point Blanc.

Alex almost laughed at himself. The headmaster at Point Blanc had been a psychopath; he'd been planning to kill sixteen fourteen-year-old boys in cold blood, fifteen by outright murder, and then the sixteenth – Alex – by dissecting him while he was still alive. Dr. Grief, with his red eyes, coldness, and his fanatical assistant, was about as far removed from Mr. Bray, Brooklands' relaxed, kindly headmaster, as it was possible to be.

Nevertheless, he still felt uncomfortable. On the other hand, he'd had enough experience of this sort of thing to know that, if he looked for the bugs, he wouldn't find them. Not without the time to really _search_.

Shrugging, he tried to put it out of his mind, and continued through his next lessons (Biology, English and Spanish) with an almost clear mind. The annoying doubt, however, was stuck in the back of his mind, and no matter how hard he tried, he just could not forget it.

"Qué hicés tu en los vacaciones pasados, Alex?" his Spanish teacher asked him, forcefully. Alex got the impression that it wasn't the first time she'd asked.

"Lo siento mucho." He said, apologetically. "Bueno, en mis vacaciones…" he paused for a moment, worried. What _had_ he done over the holidays? He couldn't say what he'd _really_ done: 'sorry, miss, in my holidays, I found out that a multi-billionaire pop singer was going to unleash nuclear weapons on unsuspecting parts of the world, and then I joined a criminal organisation, got caught by my old employers (MI6, in case you're interested), re-joined the organisation under cover, stopped all of my school mates from dying, but got shot for it'. And it was that he didn't know how to say it in Spanish, because Ian Rider had drilled Spanish into Alex's head from an early age – they had even lived in Spain for a while. No, it was just the old routine that no one would believe Alex, even if he did tell them. In fact, the only person who had ever believed Alex was Tom Harris, his best friend, and he didn't take Spanish, so he wasn't going to get any help there.

"What is it, Alex?" his teacher asked in English, rather sarcastically. "Cat got your tongue? Or can't you remember what you did?"

"No, miss." He shook his head. "I'm just trying to remember the words."

At the back of the classroom, near Alex, someone smothered a giggle. Everyone – including the teacher – knew that Alex was practically fluent in Spanish, which meant that everyone knew he was lying.

"If you've finished "remembering the words"," the teacher said, with no little asperity, "You could start by answering the question."

With a sigh, Alex did as he was told.

* * *

"So, Alex, what _did _you do during your holidays?" Jack Douglas asked, coming up to him after the lesson, flanked by a couple of friends, who stayed a little way back from Alex. 

_Probably think I'll give them something catching_. Alex thought, with a grim smile, _As if I'd give them the time of day_.

Smothering that thought, Alex looked at him for a long moment, until the other boy started to squirm, when Alex turned away, gathering up his books. "Took drugs." He said, simply, and walked off.

* * *

"Isn't it really frustrating?" Tom asked him at lunch, as they ate together in the cafeteria. "You know, that everyone thinks you're a wimp, when really, you've saved the world dozens of times?" 

"It was four times, and I didn't save the world." Alex muttered, uncomfortably.

"Well, fine then, helped the world along four times. That's still four times more than I have." Tom shrugged, biting into a burger, "So…" he began, around a mouthful of chips. "What actually happened in Consanto? After you left Jerry and me, I mean?"

Alex looked around them. "It's really not the best idea to tell you here." He said, awkwardly.

"Fine, then." Tom said, looking mulish even as he wiped ketchup off his chin. "I'll come round to your house after school today. You can tell me then – and help me with my maths prep, you know how bad I am."

"Won't your parents worry if they don't know where you are?" Alex asked, casually.

His friend's eyes turned sad, and Alex kicked himself for it. "To be honest, Alex, I don't think my parents would notice if I never went home again."

"OK." Alex nodded, desperate to stop his friend looking so sad. "It'd be great for you to come round after school. But I've really got to get my homework done – all of my teachers are after me to do extra work, cos I've missed so much."

"I bet." Tom said, with a laugh. "Too busy saving the world for algebra, huh?"

"Who's saving the world?" Nick Stephenson, a friend of Alex's and Tom's from football, said, sitting down opposite Alex.

"Me, apparently." Alex said, shooting Tom a surreptitious glare that said "_be quiet_!" clearer than he could have done. Tom just shrugged, and took another mouthful of burger. "Tom says it's the only rational answer to why I could possibly be missing so much school."

"When really you've been…doing what?" Nick asked.

Alex couldn't really blame him for asking, though it was annoying. He knew that, with his reappearance, his _dis_appearance had become a source of interest again, and everyone wanted to know why he'd been missing for so long, so often.

"I got flu after my uncle died." He lied, as he'd been told to. "It really hit hard at my immune system. I catch things a lot easier now."

"I'll say." Nick laughed, and Alex flushed, embarrassed. He looked up to see Tom giving him a sympathetic look.

"But we all know that Alex is Mr. Tough Guy," he said, jokingly, distracting Nick from Alex. "So that must be a lie fed to him by MI6, who are actually using him as their top-secret new weapon."

Alex almost yelled at him, but then realised what his friend was doing. By telling it like this, as a joke, Alex could yell it from the rooftops if he really wanted to, and everyone would think he was just playing along with it. In one sentence, Tom had taken all the credibility away from it; because, after all, if the truth is unbelievable enough, no one will believe it.

"Yeah, Tom." Alex forced a laugh. "That's exactly it."

* * *

After lunch, just before they went their separate ways, Alex to English, Tom to PE, Alex grabbed Tom's arm, and muttered, gratefully, 

"Thanks, Tom. That was – you were really great, with Nick. I never would have thought of that. It was brilliant."

Tom flashed him an impudent grin. "I know. I just can't help it. I mean – I just am, aren't I?"

Alex laughed, and let him go, arranging to meet after school at the gates.

* * *

The man watching them, several miles away, rewound what he had just seen, and enlarged Tom's face. Satisfied that he knew what the smaller boy looked like, he followed him through out the day, until he managed to lip read his name off one of the teachers. 

"_Tom Harris_." He smiled. Bullseye.

* * *

After school, Alex and Tom cycled back to the house on Cheyne Walk, where Jack greeted them with a smile and an upraised eyebrow on seeing Tom. Tom grinned up at her, greeted her politely, and managed to get some biscuits out of her, to take up to Alex's room. 

Tom went up ahead of Alex, and Jack caught Alex with a look, just before he followed his friend upstairs.

"Tom… knows about you and MI6, doesn't he?" she asked, knowing the answer, but wanting it confirmed.

"Yeah. He does." Alex nodded, confused. Was Jack about to tell him off for that?

She smiled. "Good. You- you need someone your age who understands you a little. MI6 didn't allow for how much damage this would have on you, if you were left to deal with it alone."

"MI6 have never really cared how much damage they cause me." Alex pointed out, absently, one hand going to his chest, the other, to his cheek, where he still had a faint line of shiny white scar tissue, after cutting his face, going through the roof of the Science Museum, during his first mission for MI6. "Well," he amended fairly, "They do a little. Or Mrs. Jones does, I think. But Alan Blunt… he doesn't want me to get killed, because I'm useful to him. That's all."

"When I hear you talk like this," Jack said, sadly, "I remember just how unlike a teenager you actually are."

"Alex!" Tom yelled, from upstairs. "What are you doing down there!"

"Coming!" he yelled back. "He'll go before tea, I think, or else he'll have to ring his parents, so you'll know." He told his guardian, "And I promise I'll get my homework done."

She grinned. "You're rather more like a fourteen-year-old when you talk like that." She told him.

In his room, Alex shut the door, and flopped down onto the bed, next to his friend, and said, tiredly,

"What do you want to know?"

Tom looked at him thoughtfully for a second. "If you don't want to tell me, you don't have to." He said, fairly. "I'm not going to make you. I'd just – I'd like to know. If you don't mind."

"It actually helps." Alex admitted, sitting up. "It's so weird, like you said at lunch… I feel so isolated."

"OK – so what happened?"

"First, there's something I didn't tell you." Alex admitted. "During the thing with Damien Cray…"

"The creep who made you live that computer game?" Tom asked, frowning with concentration. "You know, Alex, that's really scary – since you mentioned it, I went out and got it, and the level he made you live is really hard. I've failed it, like, a dozen times, and you've actually gone through a real life version of it? That's just weird, mate."

Alex looked down, his mouth twisting wryly. Whenever anyone mentioned the computer game Damien Cray had forced him to live through, he could still see the grotesque guards who had dressed up as Aztec gods, still feel the sting of the razor boomerang as it grazed his back, still taste the snake blood he had had to put in his mouth. "Yeah. Damien Cray – the creep who made me live his computer game." He nodded. "That's him. When he died on the plane, he had a contract killer there with him, called Yassen Gregorovich…"

"You've mentioned him before." Tom said, looking away from Alex as he struggled to remember. "Oh, yeah – he was the one who let you live, after he'd killed Herod Sayle, who wanted to give away all those laptops, right?"

"Yes." Alex nodded. "Right, well, Yassen told me about my dad."

"He knew your dad?" Tom gaped at him. "What, did he kill him or something?"

"No. My dad worked with him." Alex said, distantly, as if he was remembering something.

"So this Yassen Gregorovich was a banker, or whatever, before he became a contract killer." Tom nodded, laughing weakly. "That's it, isn't it? He got bored with being a banker, shot his boss, and became an assassin."

"No." Alex sighed, looking back at his friend. "My dad was a contract killer, with Yassen. Or so Yassen thought."

"Oh my god. Not only are you a teenage spy, you're the son of a contract killer." Tom groaned. "You're a bloody walking cliché, Alex! This is like, Alex Trevanny, or whatever his name was, in the James Bond films. Maybe your parents named you after him. When you're older, you'll turn away from truth and justice and MI6, who have been telling you lies for so long, and I'll become a spy, and we'll have to try and kill each other."

"It's too late, Tom. You weren't a spy soon enough."

Tom, for all that he was in the bottom set for almost everything, wasn't stupid. "You've already turned away from MI6?" he gaped. "Oh my god, Alex." His eyes went huge. "Are you going to have to kill me if you tell me anymore?"

Alex punched him lightly on the arm. "Of course I'm not, idiot." He grinned. "Or I wouldn't be telling you. Just shut up and let me finish my story, OK?"

Tom nodded, pinching his lips tightly together to show that he wasn't going to speak again.

"Yassen Gregorovich told me to find Scorpia, and my destiny." Alex told him, and Tom rolled his eyes, but kept quiet. "He said I'd find them in Venice. That party was all part of it, you see. One of the leaders of Scorpia was the hostess. Julia Rothman. Anyway, one of her agents found me in her study, and tried to drown me – I've told you all of this, haven't I?" Tom nodded. "OK, well then – after I jumped into Consanto, I met the same agent again – his name was Nile – and he was different. He took me to meet Julia Rothman in a hotel in Positano straight afterwards."

"What was she like?"

"Beautiful but mad." Alex said, bluntly. "I mean, you wouldn't notice it straight away, but she just wanted to see people suffer, and she made it into a job. It paid well, and she got to have fun. She lied to me, a lot – she manipulated me even more the MI6, just because she wanted to see me suffer. She was in love with my dad."

Tom shuddered. "That must have been weird."

"It was, a bit." Alex nodded. "But I never really knew my dad, even though we're so alike, so it wasn't so bad. You know, his writing is just like mine. He liked the same drink as me, and everything. Anyway," he dragged himself away from that line of thought with an almost visible effort. "Mrs. Rothman lied to me, and manipulated me into joining Scorpia. She took me to a training centre near Venice, where they gave me a shot of something, which turned out to be poison, but I didn't know it at the time, obviously…"

"They poisoned you? Why aren't you dead?"

"You've got the same poison inside you, too, if you had your BCG jab."

"Yeah, I've had it." Tom nodded, screwing up his face. "Hurt like hell, too."

"OK. Well, basically – it's all kind of confusing, really." Alex paused. "Basically, my dad was a double agent. He worked for MI6 too…"

"Nothing like inheriting the family business, I guess." Tom injected, sarcastically.

Alex allowed him a smile. "Yeah. So, my dad was working for MI6, and Scorpia found out. They're the reason my parents are dead. I didn't know that, though, so I went along with them, and nearly got myself killed doing it.

"Scorpia was being paid to launch something called 'Invisible Sword'. Basically, the BCG jab you had also contained some poison in tiny gold balls, which will crack open, if resonated at the right frequency. That releases the poison, and you die."

"Creepy." Tom shuddered. "So – is that always going to be there?"

"No." Alex considered this. "They pass out of the system. Or that's what the doctor said."

"What doctor?"

"Just a doctor. It doesn't matter." No need to mention meeting the Prime Minister. "Anyway, "Invisible Sword" was supposed to crack the alliance between Britain and America – maybe even start a war between them. America had to pay a billion dollars, withdraw all weapons and soldiers from foreign countries, and disarm, or Britain was going to pay the price. And that price was going to be the death of all school children our age across the entire country."

"But if you were working for them, why did you stop it? Why aren't I dead? Why aren't _you_ dead?"

Alex rubbed a hand over his face. "I'm really not doing this very well." He said, frustratedly. "Umm… basically, I'd told Scorpia that I couldn't kill anyone, and they didn't believe me, they said I just needed to find the right first target. They'd made it seem as though Mrs. Jones – one of the top people in MI6 – had played a major role in killing my dad, so they made me try and kill her. I nearly did – but there was a glass sheet between me and her, so I got caught. MI6 made me see differently, and I went back to Scorpia, but acting as a double agent."

"Your last week of holiday was a lot more exciting than mine." Tom muttered. "And more confusing." Alex ignored that, and continued.

"When I got back to Scorpia, I managed to convince them I'd done it, and they took me to the headquarters of "Invisible Sword". They found out about it, and – well, you know the rest. You saw me floating over London on the balloon."

"But what happened _after_ that?" Tom pressed, eagerly. "Why did you have "appendicitis"?"

"Scorpia shot me." Alex said, heavily. "Outside the MI6 Headquarters. The bullet missed my heart, which was where it was supposed to go, but it did enough damage to last a lifetime."

"Can I see the scar?" Tom asked, morbidly. Sighing, Alex showed it to him. "Oh my god, that is _ugly_." He said, wide-eyed. "Does it hurt?"

"Enough." Alex pulled his shirt closed again. He paused, awkwardly for a moment. "Tom – have you noticed anything… strange, at school?"

"Apart from the fact that you're there now?" He shot back, smartly.

Alex grinned. "Yeah – apart from that."

"No. Like what?"

"Like there's someone watching you."

He shook his head. "No. Maybe schools just creep you out, after that school in France with Dr. Good-Grief, or whatever. Or maybe you're just not in them enough to be used to them…"

"Maybe." Alex murmured, and they started talking about Tom's maths' prep, but Alex wasn't convinced.

* * *

At midnight, Alex's alarm went off. Waking, and slipping out of bed, he drew on a black T-shirt, and black trousers, then headed downstairs, leaving the house almost silently. He locked the front door, and put the key in his pocket. Then, climbing onto his bike, he set off for Brooklands. 

He knew there was something strange happening at school, and he wasn't naïve enough anymore to ignore his instincts. He would bet good money that if it wasn't something to do with him, it was another plan of Scorpia's, or an agency like Scorpia. And he was determined to find out what it was.

* * *

Thank you very much!

OK, the Spanish is supposed to mean (though I'm pretty sure it doesn't - forgive me being crap):

"Alex, what did you do last holiday?" "I'm sorry", and "Well, in my last holidays..."

Lots of hugs to the following people:

**Dory Shogun**:Thank you - hopefully this one is soon enough for you...

**missmelissa4251**: dun dun dun right back at you! ;-) I'm glad you think I've captured the feel, and maybe, if you're very lucky ( ;-) ). this one does to. Maybe shrugs maybe you should, you know... tell me what you think? (Oh, I'm going to hell - I'm such a shameless review fisher...) Thanks for your reviews, they made me smile!

**sweetstargazer**: Thanks, and here's the more you asked for!

**Akers2/Steph**: Hey! Yep, he fixed my laptop, but as I said, it's different, and I'm having a lot of trouble adapting! Still, I shouldn't complain, I'm very lucky to get it back...Thanks for your compliments, I know exactly what you mean about the stories here - a lot of them have great plot-lines, though. Now, I've updated - if we could come to an arrangement about YOUR story...

**Lily:** Thanks! I hope your dad calmed down a bit after chucking your laptop away - he has, right? ;-) Thank you, I managed an update, after getting it back, though! Aren't you proud of me! Good luck with your GCSE's, btw!

**Alexi: **Thanks, I've continued it, like you suggested... and took down the authors note, like you suggested...Thanks for the advice! Oh, and believe me, I'm looking forward to that confrontation too...

**Mpro1** : ah, my number one fan! Thanks for reviewing, glad you liked it!

**Blackfeatherz29**: yeah, I wondered that to. Probably why I'm writing this fic! ;-)

**evil blondie**: Thanks! It has, as well - the new summary, I mean. It's gotten a lot more interest now, which, of course, I'm very happy about...

**jumanji/Ellie** : I'm glad I caught your attention - hope this was a quick enough update.

**maddy midnight**: again, hope this was a quick enough update, despite all my computer drama! Glad you liked it!

**hpfan99**: another loyal fan! Well, as much as a fanfiction writer can have fans, but you know what I mean... thanks for you review, it put a smile on my face.

**ShadowSpy**: nice name! Sorry - thanks for your review... wasn't quite an immediate update, but I tried!

I'm done - thank you to all the above named, you all deserve a place in heaven. I won't see you there, but I'll be happy that you are...

Lol, etta. xxxxxxxxxxxx


	4. Chapter 4

Thank you to all my wonderful reviewers - this is dedicated to all of you!

* * *

Alex took very little time to cycle to Brooklands. It was a route he'd been cycling for six years now – ever since his uncle deemed him old enough to ride on the roads. Even the dark and the slippery drizzle couldn't put him off. This was a routine thing he could have done blindfolded, and still have arrived in time for school.

Dressed all in black, he was hardly noticeable as he slipped across the playground and into the main building. It had taken him twenty minutes to make the journey, and the clock on top of the main building was standing at a quarter past twelve. Dimly, Alex could hear Big Ben chiming in the distance. It meant that, if he was supposed to be getting up at seven o'clock for an eight o'clock school day, he had to leave at about six thirty. He had just over six hours to search for hidden cameras – without being caught.

Using a little of the things his time with Scorpia, and his own intuition had taught him, he managed to bypass the school alarm without disabling it – which would have raised alarms of its own in the morning – and ran silently up to his English classroom. At four lessons a week, he spent the most time in there, and if there was someone watching the school because of him, there were bound to be cameras in there somewhere.

He had no way of knowing that the entire school had been thoroughly rigged, and that, even now, there was a night-watcher gazing at him with puzzled intensity.

Up in his English classroom, he examined all of the places he imagined a camera could be held; the lights, which he left off, in favour of using his torch, which got into smaller places more easily, in any case; the back of the teachers desk, which faced the class; the four corners of the room; the door-handle. It was when he was examining the door handle that he saw the thin white wire that he didn't recognise, lying on the floor. It disappeared under the fire-extinguisher, and seemed to feed itself into the door-frame – or, more specifically, the building putty that was put around the edge of the door-frame to hold it in place. Rejuvenated by success, Alex searched the door-frame, and found a tiny, perfectly round piece of black glass. It had to be a camera, because why else would there be something like that embedded in the door-frame?

Searching the frame, Alex found two others, which gave whoever it was who had installed them a full view of the entire room. He rummaged in the bag he had brought, taking out a screwdriver and a pair of wire cutters. He toyed with the idea of stabbing the piece of glass, thus breaking the camera, but then decided against it. The wire couldn't be anything else, it had to be the electricity for those cameras. He held the wire cutters to the wire, then froze.

Three floors below him, a door had clicked shut. Normally, such a tiny sound would be practically silent in the busy, daytime noise of a comprehensive school. But it was a quarter to one in the morning, and there was practically no sound in the building. Quickly, he cut the wire, turned of his torch and ran.

He had no hope of hiding, unless he got out of the school, which he had no intention of doing. The man Scorpia had employed had left his night-watcher observing the cameras, and he was in constant contact with him. Even in the dark, he knew where Alex was.

He stalked the boy softly, until he came to the cupboard where Alex had hidden himself.

"Alex." He said, softly. "What are you doing in the art supply room?"

Although Scorpia had employed him to watch Alex Rider, with enough money to cover trips like this one, they had given no specifics, and he hadn't asked for any. He had assumed that Alex Rider must be the son of a wealthy man, on whom Scorpia wanted blackmail material. Maybe Alex Rider smoked dope, that sort of thing. He might be the son of Katherine Rider, the novelist, or Edward Rider, the oil tycoon. Rider was a common enough name, and there were endless possibilities as to whose spoilt son Alex might be. But because he was expecting a scared, spoilt kid, who was only in school because of a dare, or maybe for some casual vandalism, he wasn't expecting the door to fly open in his face, sending him flying

A slim, fair-haired boy dressed in black shot past him, and he only just managed to grab him by the ankle, tripping him up. Alex's forehead crashed into one of the desks as he went down, and he cried out, scrambling up, only to find himself faced with a man several inches taller than him, nearly a stone heavier, and with a lot of hurt pride.

He had no other choice. Biting his lip nervously, he took the guard position.

_You see, Mike_, some calm, sarcastic part of his mind said, _This is why I don't like sparring. My opponents are always bigger than me, and they're always trying to kill me._

The man lashed out with his foot, and though Alex dodged, he still caught the boy on his leg. He wasn't a martial-arts expert – certainly nothing like Nile, the last man he had sparred all out with – but he had experience, height and weight on his side. All Alex had was speed, and he had very little way of using it.

He stepped forward in a classic combination (palm to the face, elbow to the temple, then a kick to the stomach and a knee in the groin), and managed to get as far as kicking him in the stomach, when he realised that he was going to lose.

The man grabbed his foot, moving faster than Alex would have thought possible, twisting it, and sending Alex flying. "So you think you can beat me, huh?" he panted, putting a foot on Alex's back, and pressing down.

Alex shook his head. The man gave a triumphant grunt, and that was when Alex moved. He rolled away from him, and even though the sole of the shoe gave him rubber burn, he had the satisfaction of hearing the man stumble headfirst into one of the desks, tipping it over. Alex made a break for the door, but just as he was half-way out, a hand closed on his hair, pulling him backwards. Alex yelled.

The man threw him down, and advanced on him. Alex got to his feet as quickly as he could, but by the time he was upright, the man had a solid guard up, and Alex knew that he had no way of getting out of this. He couldn't run away anymore, and he couldn't win this fight. Either way, he was screwed.

He lashed out at the man's knee with one foot, and caught him a glancing blow – the man, abandoning finesse, threw him into a desk. He slid across the classroom, and felt the hollow metal legs of the desk buckle slightly as he hit the opposite wall. When he pushed himself away from the desk, he saw that he'd hit the white-board, and cracked it.

The man – whoever he was – was already on him, and if Alex had been any other fourteen year old boy, he would have been begging him to stop, and he certainly wouldn't still have been fight. But Alex wasn't any other fourteen year old boy.

He threw himself at the man, missed, rolled, and ran for it. For the first time in his life, he was blinded by real panic. This was his school, things like this weren't supposed to happen here! Even in Constanto, when he'd thought Nile was going to kill him, he hadn't felt this scared. Nile had been an assassin, straight down and simple, but Alex had known that, and he'd been able to judge his actions accordingly. But he didn't know this man, and he didn't know why he was here, or why he was here for him, or why he knew his name. Scorpia would have been his first bet – but they had made a deal with MI6, and they were truthful to a certain extent… weren't they?

Alex ran until he found himself in a dead end, in another of the classrooms. Surely the man wouldn't find him here, would he?

As it turned out, he did. He was already there by the time Alex turned round, and he threw a chair at him. Alex dodged it, and almost smiled – he couldn't expect to beat a much more agile fourteen year old like that. The chair cracked as it hit a desk, which toppled over with a crash, putting a hole in the linoleum. Alex stared sickly at it, knowing that any strangeness at Brooklands would always point the finger of blame at him. He'd come here trying to save his school-mates the same prickling fear that he'd gone through at Point Blanc, but it seemed that, as usual, the only thing he was going to do was pull more loneliness onto himself.

He did the only thing he could think of, and took the offensive approach. As long as the man kept him on defence, he couldn't win, no matter what he did. He barrelled his full weight into him, and sent him stumbling backwards. Their combined weights put a dent in the plaster, and all Alex got for it was a fist in his face. His mouth began to take on the coppery taste of blood, as blood from his bitten tongue and lip spread. He knew he had to look terrible – a bruise forming around his eye, a blood on his lips, one arm dangling, practically useless, from where he'd hit the desk, dressed in black.

_Like some wannabe assassin_, Alex thought, wryly_ How fitting._

He didn't have time for much more, as he had to dodge another chair, which went flying through one of the windows. They were on the second floor, and it hit the ground with a hell of a crash. It also triggered the school alarm system, and the man grabbed the front of Alex's long sleeved T-shirt.

"Maybe next time, Little Alex, you won't mess with things that don't concern you."

"I wouldn't be doing my job."

"Fourteen year olds don't have jobs." He laughed. Alex laughed right back at him. Neither of them sounded particularly amused.

"I do." He shrugged.

The man stopped laughing, abruptly. "Did Scorpia try and recruit you?"

"No." Alex shook his head, one eye warily on the man, in case he tried anything else. _After all, they didn't try_. he excused himself, though he didn't feel particularly guilty about lying to the man who'd just done such a good job of beating him up. _They did recruit me_.

"Then I think they've underestimated you." He said, looking at Alex, carefully.

"No." Alex shook his head again. "They haven't. You did."

Even as he said it, he realised his mistake in talking to this man. He'd framed Alex, trapped him between a window he couldn't jump from, and a door he couldn't get to, and he melted away as the security guards arrived. They took one look at Alex, dressed in black, and standing in the middle of a practically destroyed classroom, put two and two together, and came up with eight.

Alex spent the rest of the night in a cell.

* * *

He woke up with cold bright light filtering through the grimy, barred window. Last night, they had thrown him in there, and locked the door, forgoing any medical attention on the grounds that he was a 'dangerous criminal'. Now, as he woke, he could feel the dull ache from his eye, and the throbbing pain in his shoulder. He also seemed to have done something to his leg, because when he stood, fiery bolts of pain shot through his calf and knee. Rolling up his trouser leg, he saw a mess of congealed blood just below his knee – probably caused by hitting the edge of the table, but Alex couldn't sort out his confused, blurring memories enough to be certain.

He was in the cell for over two hours – though it felt longer – before a cardboard-faced police woman came and escorted him out. Alex knew better than to try and gain any sympathy from her. She'd tell her superiors that he'd tried to play her, and it would just land him in even more trouble. To people like her, an attempt to gain sympathy was as good as an admission of guilt. Alex was getting good at reading people, and people who work for a system are never difficult to understand.

To his surprise, he was taken to Brooklands, and escorted, with a guard, up to Mr. Bray's office. The guard left him at the door, and he knocked, wincing as the rough wood bit against scraped knuckles.

Mr. Bray motioned for him to take a seat, and sat down behind his desk. Alex shifted uncomfortably in the soft leather seat; his headmaster looked like he couldn't decide whether to be disappointed or angry, and Alex knew from experience that both were equally difficult to deal with.

"I'm taking you back against my better judgement." Mr. Bray said, looking at him, sternly. "Do you _know_ how much trouble you've caused for us, Alex? At least five hundred pounds, to repair the two classrooms you wrecked, detrimental news coverage… that's the only reason we're not pressing charges against you, we can't afford to look even worse. And you have your guardian to thank that we're not expelling you! I was tempted – after that affair with the science schools, and the amount of school you're missing, you wouldn't exactly be a huge loss to us, you know. But he gave us a very generous donation, so we're keeping you on."

Alex looked down, choosing to ignore the reference to his 'guardian', who was obviously a member of MI6, if not Alan Blunt himself. Of course they wouldn't want any attention drawn to him. "I'm sorry." He said, softly.

"You're always sorry." Mr. Bray sighed. "Always, Alex. I understand that you were angry about getting beaten up," Alex's head shot up at that. "But really, why were you out at midnight, anyway? Your housekeeper was frantic, now she's just furious. Was it really necessary to vandalise two classrooms? And why those two classrooms?"

Alex looked at him for a long moment. This was his chance; he could tell the truth, and maybe, for once in his life, somebody would believe him. But looking at Mr. Bray's care-worn, tired face, he knew that even if he believed him, no one else would. He'd still get the same punishment, and in the end, it might just make more problems for a man who had only ever tried to help him. "I don't know." He shrugged. As Mr. Bray raised an eyebrow, he elaborated, lying through numb lips. "I think I was a bit drunk, sir."

Another tired sigh. "Alright. Well, your guardian said he was going to be picking you up for an urgent appointment somewhere – again – and that you'd be missing the rest of today." He looked at Alex, firmly. "Don't expect any leniency from us again, Alex. This is your last warning."

"Yes, sir." Alex nodded, and left the room.

* * *

The black car MI6 sent had locked the front door, and Alex was forced to get into the back, while hostile eyes watched him from the playground. He had lost most of his friends in this last, very public escapade, including Tom, with whom he'd had a massive fight, just ten minutes before.

_"Alex, everyone's saying that you're the person who trashed Miss Webster's classroom." Tom said, quietly. "And Mr. Sinclair's. It's not true, is it?"_

_"Yeah." Alex sighed. "It's true."_

_"But… but why?"_

_"Because I got beaten up in there." Alex said, looking at him properly for the first time._

_"Shit, your eye…" Tom took a step forward, and Alex stepped away from him._

_"Don't." he shook his head. "Don't come near me, or they'll target you, too. This is MI6 stuff, and I need to talk to them about it. If anyone sees you with me, they could try and get you too."_

_"Stop talking like a James Bond movie!" Tom snapped "I know you're stressed, but aren't you taking this a bit far? Why is everything about you to do with MI6?"_

_"Because they've taken over my life, and that's what makes me who I am now!" Alex defended himself. "Look, I know what I'm doing, OK?"_

_"Well, you obviously don't, or you wouldn't have been beaten up for it, would you?" Tom shouted. _

_"Hey, that wasn't my fault!" Alex said, angrily. "I know what I'm doing, I can't help it if sometimes people get in the way! If it had gone to plan, no one would ever have known!"_

_"So you're a sneak now, too?"_

_"Shut up!" Alex said, pushing past him – but Tom grabbed his arm. Alex gave a tiny cry of pain, and tried to pull it away, but the effort brought tears to his eyes as Tom held fast, and all he did was twist already bruised muscles. "Let go!"_

_"You're becoming obsessive, Alex. You're a teenager, not a spy." Tom gritted out._

_He left Alex standing there, holding his arm gingerly, to stop the pain streaking through his shoulder. _

_"Why can't I be both?" he whispered, and allowed one of the tears to fall, before blinking the rest away, and resuming his stoic mask._

As the car drove away, Alex resigned himself to being lonely for the rest of his life.

* * *

My thanks go out to all of my reviewers - I would thank all of you personally, because that's what I normally try to do, but I'm a little strapped for time at the moment. Suffice to say, all of you gave lovely, extremely complimentary reviews, and I'm really pleased that you all like this so much!

Thanks - until next time (which is gonna be at least two weeks)! oh, by the way... the story is pretty much already written, so I'm holding out for reviews now!

I'm so evil.

Lol, etta! xxxxxxx


	5. Chapter 5

I like this chapter. I don't know why - it just felt good. Like I knew what I was doing; I hope that you agree with me, when you're done reading...

Enjoy!

DISCLAIMER: I'm a girl, and proud of it. So the chances of my name being 'Anthony' are slim to none. Which really rules out any chance of me being 'Anthony' Horowitz and owning the Alex Rider series, really, doesn't it?

* * *

The car was, predictably, upholstered in over-comfortable black leather. Alex sank into the butter-soft leather, and felt vulnerably out of control, as he tried to find a position where he would be able to move quickly. It was a car which was designed to be different things to different people – to those who weren't worrying about what they were facing, it was luxurious. To those who were, it was designed to either throw you off guard – or throw you off balance.

When they finally arrived at the Royal and General Bank, he fought his way out of the seat, while fighting the temptation to sink even further into them. Alex had finally given up this on-going battle with MI6 and the rest of the world. He had no more reserves to call on, and no more will power to fight with. This was a battle he couldn't win, and if MI6 had taught him anything, it was when you were in a lose-lose situation.

Alex chose to forget that they reason he was so useful to them was because he got out of lose-lose situations. This wasn't one he could fight. This one had been made by the people who were supposed to be the good guys.

* * *

For the first time ever, Blunt made him wait, and he sat for over an hour in a green leather/dark wood room which was eerily reminiscent of the Houses of Parliament. The only entertainment on offer came in the form of magazines with titles like "The Warwickshire Home-Buyer", and the doors – like everything else the other side of the Royal and General's main foyer – were all protected by obviously-armed guards. Even the doors to the toilets were guarded.

By the time Alex finally got called up to the office on the fifteenth floor, he was thoroughly bored, and starting to be angry. He hadn't done anything really awful – or not so awful that MI6 needed to be brought in. Any other teenager would have been grounded. Him? He was threatened by the Head of MI6.

Blunt was furious.

"Alex." He said, coldly. "Sit down."

Even as Alex did it, he was thinking how out-of-proportion this was. How could a bit of school-boy vandalism escalate into something so huge? He was a fourteen-year-old school-boy, not a forty-year-old criminal.

"You jeopardised your school and yourself – and worst of all, you've jeopardised us." Blunt said, in a frigid, level voice. "In a moment of reckless frustration. We employed you on the assumption that you had a modicum of self-control…"

"Actually, you haven't employed me at all." Alex pointed out, in irritation. "I'm not paid anything for what I do for you. And it's not like you gave me interviewed for this "job", I never _said_ I had self-control, you assumed…"

"Shut up!" Blunt snapped, a trickle of anger seeping into his voice. It was the first time Alex had ever seen him show any emotion at all. "You put us in danger of being discovered – what if someone had dug around and found out something about your involvement with us?"

"Over what!" Alex shouted, angry himself. "Why would anyone bother to dig around in my past, because I supposedly trashed a classroom in a little-known state school!"

"That's not the point, the point is the possibility and the reason was there. Everything is a story these days, Alex. I was foolish to think that you had any ability whatsoever to deal with this sort of thing. You're just a child…"

"Well, you're happy enough to take advantage of that, though, aren't you?" Alex snapped.

"I wasn't taking advantage of it, I thought you were simply more adult than this. I thought you could be trusted. Apparently, I was wrong. The Prime Minister has been telling me that I was wrong to use a child at all…"

"Then maybe you shouldn't have "employed" me in the first place." Alex said, coolly. "Maybe it would be a good thing if someone _did _dig around in my past, and did find out about you. Then you'd have to stop exploiting me – I mean, this is child labour isn't it? It's illegal…"

"It's not illegal." Mrs. Jones replied, quietly. "It's just… non-standard."

Suddenly Alex was sick of all this – all the side-stepping and the secrecy, all of the lies and counter-lies. He was sick of being taken implicitly at his word when it suited them and disbelieved when it didn't. He was sick of their double-standard.

"I don't suppose you care that my school's been bugged." He said, recklessly. "I don't suppose you care that the person who beat me up – the one who caused all the damage, by the way – was talking about Scorpia…"

"Of course your school has been bugged." Blunt dismissed him, "You're an agent of ours who had foiled numerous men with powerful allies – not least, Scorpia. It's for your own protection."

Alex stared at him. "_You_ bugged…"

"Yes, we bugged Brooklands." Mrs. Jones nodded. "And we keep you under surveillance. Not at school, but when you're away."

"You're quite happy to send me away completely on my own, without protection, but heaven forbid I take a walk without you knowing it." Alex smiled, faint and sour. "Thank you, but I think we've both heard enough. I can't believe you. You treat me like dirt when it suits you, but you claim that I'm your top agent. I'm sick of it." He stood up. "Thank you for the interview." He said, bitterly.

"Sit down, Alex." Blunt said, softly.

"No." Alex shook his head, already by the door. "I'm not going to let you treat me like a child anymore. I'm not one, and you can't claim that I am. Not the way you treat me, half the time."

* * *

He shut the door on his last word.

He found himself in a corridor, and found that he couldn't face the idea of using the lift, being stuck in the claustrophobic little cubicle, and presented with an image of himself on all sides. He took the stairs.

On the twelfth floor, he was just starting the next flight of stairs, when a man squeezed himself through the swing door, and puffed out a greeting.

"Alex, old boy." He said, smiling and panting. "Could you spare me a second or two?"

Alex stared at him, indecisive. "If you're going to talk to me about Blunt and Mrs. Jones, Mr. Smithers…" he began.

"Oh, no." Smithers smiled, already ushering him through the doors, "I know you don't want to hear anything more about _them_. No, this is about what's going on at your school?"

"Really?" Alex started walking more willingly. "Are you the person who bugged Brooklands?"

"No, but I invented the bug." He smiled, hiding his eyes in creases of fat. "Wonderful little gadget, very thin, can go anywhere. For the most part, they're just to side of the white-boards, in the classrooms. Magnificent range, pick up sounds from over a hundred metres away…" he opened the door for Alex, and steered him inside. "Do have a seat."

Smithers' own seat was huge, but the man still managed to dwarf it. "Now, Alex. This bit of vandalism of yours…"

"I didn't do it." Alex said, immediately. "Or, rather, I did, but not the way everyone's saying."

"I know." Smithers' said, seriously. "I know. You see, this morning, on our play-back monitors, I watched while you cut a camera wire – it can only have been a camera wire, dear boy, they're all the same for cameras, no device has a wire is quite like another's – but none of our cameras have lost the connection."

"I still can't believe you watch me in school." Alex muttered.

"No need to worry, old chap, you're a bright lad." Smithers said, cheerily. "We're all very impressed with you down here in Q-section."

"So it _is _actually Q-section, like in James Bond?" Alex asked, off-handedly, glad for the mundane subject change.

"Yes." Smithers admitted, with what would have been a wry smile on a slenderer man, but on him, the sarcasm was swallowed by his bulk. "It's a throw over from when we were still calling ourselves the Secret Intelligence Service, back during the Cold War. Q. Quartermaster, supplies, you see? Now it's Q-section, and most people don't even know what it stands for."

"Thank you for telling me."

"No trouble at all, dear boy. Now, this problem with the vandalism. Don't worry, I'm sure it will all solve itself – and _try_ not to leave us, will you, it's much more fun inventing things for you, than it is for all the older agents, they're all far too serious to enjoy them."

"I don't enjoy actually using them, Mr. Smithers."

"Of courses not, but you enjoy the secrets of them, don't you? That's what we're all about, down here – ordinary things and their secrets. Speaking of which…"

He leant down, and spoke into the potted plant again. "Miss Pennyfeather? The prototypes, please." He looked up at Alex, again. "I'm sorry, old boy, but you haven't given me enough time to really get to grips with these new things, so they may be a little faulty, if you try to use them."

"What are you giving me?" Alex asked.

"You'll see." A woman entered, holding a tray. "Ah, Miss Pennyfeather, I'll have them here, please. Thank you." She smiled, handed him the tray, and left. He put it in front of him, on the desk, and showed Alex what was on it. There was a phone, a brace rather like the one he had been using during his time with Scorpia, though without all the wires, a watch, and an iPod Shuffle.

"As I said, just prototypes, but they're all I've got for you at the moment. They should do the job – and to be honest, I don't know whether I want you to have to use them or not! If you do, you've been proved right, if you don't… maybe all this will blow over, and I won't have to build them up again." He said, looking at Alex seriously.

"I hope so." Alex said, softly. "I don't want anything to happen at school. I've already got too much to deal with there."

"Maybe if they knew, it would be easier on you?" Smithers suggested, diffidently, once again showing an agility of mind which was strangely surprising in someone who was so physically bulky.

"Maybe." Alex agreed, with a shrug. "But I don't want to take that risk. I just want to get my GCSE's."

"Quite." There was a silence, while Smithers looked down at the tray, discontentedly. "I'm sorry about these." He said, sounding almost miserable, and it took Alex a couple of seconds to work out that he was talking about the gadgets. "These are very basic. The shuffle in particular… given three months or so, I could have given you one of the most technologically advanced spying devices in the world – better than the GameBoy, or the iPod I gave you last time. You see, old chap, the beauty of this thing is that it hasn't got a screen, so it can't show anything to anyone who doesn't know how to use it… We're about to make a breakthrough with it, involving using it as a long-range thermal sensor. At the moment, though I'm afraid it rather one-dimensional."

"I'm sure it's brilliant, Mr. Smithers."

"It is, rather." He agreed, without a hint of conceit. "But it could be so much better. You see, Alex, a boy poses so many fascinating ideas, which can then be transferred into the adult world in a surprising number of ways. I've got one of my top men working on this at the moment. This is the best of the bunch so far, but still…" he paused, the shook himself out of it, "Now, listen carefully, dear boy, because I haven't got enough time to explain all this to you more than once."

"I'm listening." Alex said, and leant forward to get a better view of what he was being shown.

"The shuffle is physically perfectly ordinary – we've made some adjustments, so the casing is actually metal, rather than plastic, and the earphones are rather better than the cheap ones that come with it, which are so popular… you can upload music onto it, and listen to it – provided you have iTunes, of course. However, inside is a tiny vial of highly compressed, concentrated sleep gas. It can knock out up three adults for up to half an hour, if used at close range."

Alex picked up the shuffle, and weighed it in his hands. Sure enough, it was slightly heavier than the high street model, and was slightly thicker, too, but not noticeably so.

"Good fake, isn't it?" Smithers beamed. "Right, well, to work this sleep gas, you take the earphones out, and hold down the fast forward button for five seconds. You have to remember to do both, though, or it won't work. It's a safety precaution. Completely necessary. Got that?"

"Take the earphones out, and hold fast forward down for five seconds." Alex repeated dutifully. "Have you put any music on?"

"James Bond theme tune." Smithers replied, with a fat chuckle. Alex grinned, wryly. "Still, apart from the sleep gas, I'm afraid that that's all the shuffle does, as of yet. As I said, in a few months, it could have been much more advanced…"

"Really, I'm glad I've got something." Alex said, quietly, still turning the Shuffle over in his hands.

"Yes, well… now, old bean, onto the phone." He picked it up, and it seemed to disappear in his podgy hand. "The pin number is, I'm afraid to say, double-o-seven seven. It seemed the most fitting, at the time." He shrugged, apologetically.

"Double-o-seven seven." Alex said, memorising the number.

"That's it. At the very least, you won't forget it. The phone itself is on the O6 network – the "bank's" network, you know, all the agents are on it. I've inserted you on it under my own name. Everyone's used to me testing out various makes of phone under my "network" account, so they'll just assume that it's for me. Most of our agents have two phones – on the company ones, you can only ring members of MI6. Still, I haven't given it to you for social calls. You can use your own phone for that."

"I don't have a mobile."

"Really?" Smithers looked surprised. "Well, maybe I'll give it to you for your birthday."

"Thank you." Alex smiled, faintly.

"Anyway, about this particular phone – most of the special features are incorporated on the speed dial system. Phones nowadays are so advanced, there's really very little I can do to enhance them. That one has an bug-repellent in it," Both of them knew that they weren't talking about insects, "And apart from that, it's all down to you remembering which speed dial to use. Numbers one and two are both me – one is me normally, if you just need me for maintenance reasons, or something non-urgent, the other is my emergency phone. We all need a contact, and it looks like I'm the only one you've got at the moment." He waved away Alex's stammered thanks with a fat hand and the carelessness of one who has always had someone to turn to. "The other speed dials are less mundane. Number three will record any conversations within forty metres – don't worry about decoding them, the phone can do that itself, so long as you select the area you want to hear from. You can do that using the games section. It's under Minesweeper, old boy." He said, when Alex raised a questioning eyebrow. "Number four will transmit those conversations directly to us – and also any voice messages you want to pass on. Number five is a basic distress signal. This one, however, only transmits to me. If it's only me receiving a distress signal from you, dear boy, I'll send some lower-down agents."

"What if I need higher-up agents?" Alex asked, smiling.

"That's where the brace comes in." He picked up the plastic plate. This time, the translucent plastic was more opaque, and same colour as the wiring, so the mess of wires was only obvious if you knew what you were looking for. "It's exactly the same was the one you used when you were with Scorpia; the switch is in exactly the same place as it was last time, and everything. This time, though, it's not transparent. Where's the doctor's note they've given you?" Alex handed it over, and Smithers ripped it up, and gave him a substitute. "Sorry, old chap, but you've just had an orthodontist's appointment."

Alex grinned.

"Right. If this goes off at the same time as the phone, it will trigger an alarm which will sound in Alan Blunt's office as well as mine. He'll know what – and who – it means, even if he doesn't know why, and he won't ignore it." He noted Alex's sceptical look, and smiled. "No, really, old bean, he won't ignore it. He's angry with you, but you're far too valuable to him for him to risk you out of a fit of spite. He'll send people."

"OK. Now, what's the watch?"

"Hmm? Oh, the watch. That's just a present, from me to you. I know the last watch you were given was from Scorpia, and I'm sure you haven't worn that since you found out the truth, have you?"

"No." Alex admitted, in a near-whisper. "I haven't."

"You can wear this one, then."

"It's not, like, a tracking device, or anything, is it?"

"No, it's a watch. A rather advanced watch, I admit, but it's just a watch, old boy. Even we stop updating things after a point, and you've got some of our best gadgetry already."

He paused, looked around, and lowered his voice. "But, just between you and me, if you were to have any problems, and you happened to fiddle with your watch just a bit – maybe left the alarm on for a few seconds – it might just happen blow up. It's a rather temperamental model, that one. I call in the Boom and Mercy. The watch Scorpia gave you was a Baum and Mercier, wasn't it?" Alex nodded. "Well, we've done one better." He smiled, satisfied.

Standing, he lowered his voice even more, and said, "Look, old bean, I'm strictly going against orders here, but I don't like the way the Powers That Be are handling you on this one. They're not listening to me either. I don't know whether it's because they don't trust me, or whether it's because they don't trust you, but they've taken a misstep somewhere, and they'll kick themselves for it if they lose you because of it."

"Mr. Smithers…?"

Smithers looked more serious than Alex had ever seen him. "Alex," he began, and Alex almost started, because Smithers had never called him by his name before, without some humorous suffix "It's my job to have gadgets for every mission my superiors could possibly think up. After a while, all of this guess work means that I can second guess them pretty accurately, and I know that right now, the most important thing to do is to protect you. If they won't, I'll take steps to do so. So this may be going against their orders, but," here, he smiled a strange, self-deprecating little smile, "But it will protect you better than a handful of altered toys."

"Mr. Smithers, you've done more for me than anyone else here." Alex said, sincerely.

"I know." He nodded, his normal, cheerful mask slotting back on so quickly and so firmly that if Alex hadn't witnessed him, he would never have known that behind the eccentric, harmless mask, there was a razor sharp intelligence. Even witnessing the devices Smithers dreamt up wouldn't have told him that. Smithers was undoubtedly a puzzle – and not one Alex had time to figure out now. "Now, dear boy, follow me, please."

Alex followed him through a bewildering rabbit-warren of corridors, until they reached a tiny, brushed steel lift. There were no mirrors, or carpeting inside – it was just a metal box, which took them down several floors – the basement, as Alex later found out. There, Smithers hailed another man, younger than him, and markedly thinner.

"Alex, this is Dominic Martins. Nick, have you got them ready?"

"Yes." The man's voice was low, and very quiet. He looked remarkably like Alex might have, had he not become a spy so young – he had floppy blond hair, which fell into brown eyes, just as Alex's did, but his face was rounder, more relaxed than Alex's, which had begun to take on a pinched, worried look as his missions got more and more nerve-wracking and personal. He had a slender, almost fragile build, and he looked even smaller, when stood next to Smithers' massive bulk. "So this is Alex Rider…"

"Yes. Blunt's 'protégé'." He shot Alex a sideways grin.

"Less of a protégé and more of a problem, at the moment." Nick said, with a slight laugh.

"Quite." Smithers allowed himself a moment's humour. "Look, Nick, I've got to go. Someone's bound to have seen me coming down here with Alex. I know no one will say anything unless they're asked, but if Blunt or Mrs. Jones find out I'm not in my office, and _start_ asking, they'll find out everything. If they find out we gave Alex one of these, where would we be?"

"Out on our ears." Nick agreed. "OK, Tim. I'll see you later."

"Blades, at eight?"

"Blades at eight."

Alex waited until Smithers had gone, and then said, questioningly. "Good friend?"

"Half brother." Nick flashed him a brief grin. "Same mum, different dad. Hence, different surnames."

"You don't look at all alike."

"It's Tim's size." Nick said, sadly, already moving them towards a small side door in the quiet, brightly lit underground room. "We both take after our mother, and before Tim's digestive system started playing up, you couldn't tell us apart."

"MI6 seems to be quite the family organisation." Alex observed, with a faint undertow of sarcasm.

"Family…?" Nick frowned. "Oh, I see, your dad and your uncle, and now me and Tim. Well, I suppose you could put it that way. We're not allowed to tell anyone what we do, so what a lot of people do is pretend that they're recruiting their relatives, to get round the Official Secrets Act. Sometimes, however, people say yes. That's what happened with Tim. He was recruited straight out of Oxford, and he wanted to tell me, so he pretended he was recruiting me – but I said yes. I was a weapons expert, so they took me on."

"Oh." Alex looked around the room they were now in. The walls were lined with different guns, and Nick was immediately more business like.

"Tim said to get a gun ready which would be powerful, fatal even at long range, but easily hidden. I've found three for you – the Browning HP, which is small, but very powerful, a Walther PPK 7.65 – it's a .32 calibre, and if you're a James Bond fan, which I doubt you are, given your, er… hobby, you'll know that he was forced to give up his Beretta in favour of this one. It's a very light weapon, but it's got more stopping power than the Beretta. The final one I've got for you is an Enfield .38. Now I've seen you, I think we can put away the Browning. Tell me, what weapon did you shoot when you were with Scorpia?"

"They gave me a Belgium made gun. I can't remember the make – it might have been a Walther." Alex said, thinking back.

"Were you any good?"

"They said I was." Alex shrugged. "Until it got onto real targets."

"They gave you realistic targets?" Nick shot him a sharp look. "Did they try civilian shoot outs?"

"No." Alex said, remembering the sickening feeling of holding a gun in his hand while he shot at seemingly random, innocent people. "Just random photos of people."

"I always knew Scorpia were sickening." Nick said, grimly. "But to try that on a fourteen-year-old is just disgusting."

"I don't think they're exactly known for their sensitivity." Alex pointed out, softly.

"No." Nick agreed, shortly, "They're not. Here, you take these, I'll take the ammo, and let's try you out with them. I've kept the shooting range clear since mid-morning."

By the time Alex left, he had Smither's gadgets with him, and the Walther PPK in a slim holster low on his left hip. Beyond warning him not to use it without thinking, making sure that the safety was always on, and making sure that he wore loose trousers, so that it couldn't be seen, Nick hadn't said too much on the subject, except that he was a good shot, and to try and keep his head, if he ever needed to shoot.

Alex shuddered at the prospect. He didn't want to have to, but he knew that if he was given a choice between a member of Scorpia and a himself – or any other innocent bystander – he'd pick the Scorpia member.

He just hoped he never ended up in that situation.

* * *

I don't have time to thank everyone individually, though your reviews meant as much as they did before, and still do. Thank you so much for reviewing me - and next update, I promise, I'll thank you all individually, like I normally try to.

In the meantime, though - go on. Gimme a review...

Thanks! Lol, etta xxx


	6. Chapter 6

* * *

Karate than night was tense, with Mike treating him with kid gloves, and Charlie occasionally shooting him anxious, almost scared looks. He finally came over in their five minute break, and said, in a low, sympathetic voice,

"Look, Alex – is everything OK, y'know, at home?" Alex didn't answer, waiting for him to elaborate, and finally he blurted out. "Was it your parents who shot you?" Alex stared at him, completely dumbstruck. "God, I'm bad at this." Charlie muttered. "I mean – my parents were complete bastards, so they took me away from them, and I live with my adopted parents now. But – I just wanted to say that… well… if anything's the matter, I'm here for you. I'll try and help."

Alex stared at him, surprised and touched. He'd almost forgotten what it felt like to have someone really care something about him. "Thanks, Charlie." He said, a sudden, genuine grin creeping onto his face, despite his current situation. "It wasn't my parents, actually – I live with a guardian too, though. My parents died when I was little."

Charlie gave him a surprised glance. "Really? How did I not know that?" Alex smiled. "Just shows how much time we get to talk during these lessons, doesn't it?"

At that moment, as if to prove his point, Mike called the class back into session, and they didn't get a chance to talk again, even afterwards, as Charlie's adoptive mother picked him up straight after. Alex looked at her with a strange feeling in the pit of his stomach. She was a nice, cheerful woman, a little plump, with thick, shoulder-length blond hair, and large earrings. She greeted her son with obvious affection, asking him immediately how the class was, shooting a polite smile at Mike, and hustling him away to the car. Charlie might have been adopted, but he was obviously loved, too.

_That could have been me_, Alex thought, on the lonely walk back to the practically-empty house in Chelsea, _If it wasn't for Ian Rider, that could have been me. I wouldn't have been a spy. I might have been loved. I wouldn't have a gun in my top draw right now – I might not even have learnt karate. I could have been loved._

Somehow, he couldn't get the idea out of his head. Jack was his best friend, his ally, but she was definitely not his mother. She was only about nine years older than him, in any case – and she wasn't a parent-figure. Ian Rider had never been a parent figure.

John and Helen Rider. They might have been his parents, but Alex couldn't love them as anything more than a blurred, childish memory, and a couple of photos. What would they have been like, as parents? Would John have moulded him into a spy? Would Helen have let him?

Would he have known his uncle Ian as a bank manager, or something else? What would have thought his dad did? What would he have been like?

Suddenly, Alex never felt more alone. Even Jack wasn't talking to him, despite normally being on his side.

"I'm sorry, Alex." She had said, "But I can't face this anymore. I have nothing to say. You don't listen to me, and I'm seriously thinking about going back to America. MI6 can have you, at the moment."

Alex had had no reply, but Jack had gone on. Softening slightly, she had added. "Well, alright, I wouldn't actually leave you with them. But what you did was stupid, and foolish, and attention seeking. Why on earth would you want to seek attention like that? You're a bright kid, Alex, and all you'd have to do would be to turn up occasionally, and do your prep! They'd give you attention because you're clever, not because you ruin the school for other people!"

"I wasn't attention seeking, and I wasn't just trying to trash the school!" Alex had protested. "Why won't anyone believe me?"

"Because there's no evidence the contrary." Jack had sighed.

"Well, there was no evidence with Damian Cray, either, but you believed me then."

"There was more evidence than now. I mean, what are you going on, Alex? A bad feeling?" She had thrown up her hands, and turned away. "I can't talk to you right now, Alex. I'm not going to punish you, because I don't have any control over your life anymore – but I'm not going to speak to you, either. Not until I've calmed down." She had turned back, and her glare was doubly hurtful because she looked so hurt. "I'm really angry with you, you know that, right?"

* * *

Alex managed to sleep through most of Saturday morning. He hadn't been planning to do anything anyway, but he slept until ten in any case, so he wouldn't have been able to. He got up, and did some of the chores which Jack had asked him to do before, and then, rather than be sitting around all day doing nothing, he took his bike, and went for a ride, leaving a note for Jack. He couldn't stand the cold atmosphere of the house much longer.

Now that he was aware that he was tailed – or "under surveillance" – when he wasn't at school, he spotted the tail very easily, and decided to lead them something of a dance.

By the time he got to Oxford Street, he'd lost them, and he spent a few hours wandering up and down the street, occasionally ducking into one of his favourite stores, and leaving again without buying anything.

It was two o'clock by the time he left Oxford Street. He deliberately took the back streets, to see if anyone was following, but there was still no one. It was when he was almost half-way home that he saw the sign:

"_Blank Shooting Range_."

Shrugging, he went in.

* * *

He spent another two hours in there, perfecting his aim from the shoulder, and hoping against hope that he didn't have to shoot from the hip, which was notoriously difficult. By the time he left, at three, he had perfect aim on the bulls eyes and the human shaped targets, though thankfully no one had asked him to shoot at any photos of people. Just as no one had asked him about the live cartridges he had take out of the magazine of his weapon before asking for some blank PPK cartridges.

Jack was out when he got back, much, much later, and he made himself some more of her pasta, and went up to his room. He didn't hear her come back that night, but heard her breathing when he got up the next morning. From the way she slept in past nine, something that she never normally did, Alex surmised that she had a hang over, and felt guilty for being – at least partially – the cause of it.

Apart from Jack's hangover, Sunday was one of the most boring days of Alex's life, to date. Jack was still refusing to speak to him, his teachers had dropped off numerous piece of homework, or pieces of revision which he needed to catch up on the day before, when he was out, and he had no one he could possibly turn to. 

It dragged on and on, until finally, when he went to bed, he could have screamed with frustration. He wasn't used to being confined inside, with nothing to do, and no one to do it with.

And while he wanted Sunday to end, he didn't want Monday to come. Monday, when he would have to face an entire school who hated him. Monday, when he'd have to see again the teachers who thought he was a thug. Monday, when he'd have to deal, yet again, with the frustration of a whole load of people who didn't believe him.

* * *

Monday arrived, with that strange peculiarity of English weather, overcast but bright all the same. It was a much harsher light than normal sunlight, a colder, whiter light which did nothing to make Alex feel any more at ease as he walked into the playground at Brooklands, and watched as people moved away from him, and others whispered things as he passed. A couple of people shouted things at him; a rubber hit him in the back of the head. Alex closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and finished his journey into the school buildings.

He had faced down men who wanted to take over the world, and perfectly prepared to murder children – i.e. Alex – to do so. Somehow, a playground full of hostile school-children was scarier.

People had envied Alex before, and had consequently made his life unpleasant, and the school thugs had once decided to target him, briefly, but he had never been faced with six hundred-odd people who all thought that he was either certifiable or just plain bad. He had never had six hundred odd-people all trying to avoid him at the same time, six hundred-odd people who all disliked him. But that was what he was dealing with now.

He didn't know how he got through the first three lessons – Biology, Maths and History – but he assumed that the teachers were willing to pass over the problem boy for this particular lesson, to avoid the disruption calling on him would cause. Mostly, all he was aware of was tens of pairs of eyes boring into his back, and a wall of antagonism which was practically palpable. And all the time, he was very aware of the ticking bomb on his wrist (admittedly not activated), the gas grenade in his pocket, and the slim, soft leather holster on his hip, warmed by his body, high enough on the leg to reach quickly and with ease, and low enough to be unnoticeable.

* * *

After break on a Monday, they always had assembly, in the school "theatre", which was really little more than a gym with seats in it. When they got to Assembly, Alex deliberately walked in last, so he got a seat on the end of a row, and was saved the ignominy of being all on his own on a row. Even so, the person he was sat next to – Jack Douglas, as it happened – edged away from him.

Mr. Bray was three quarters of his way through his weekly greeting, when Alex heard the cars outside. There were too many of them, and they were too loud, to simply be cars parking in the car park, but as Alex looked around, fear coiling in his stomach, he noticed that no one else seemed to hear it. They were all intent on Mr. Bray – no doubt wondering what he was going to say about Alex's "escapade".

Mr. Bray had started to talk about it when the doors to the gym (both sets, as there were two entrances), were flung open, and an army of armed guards fanned through the room. Ominously, they were dressed in black, and as well as the rifles they had slung over their backs, they wore pistols prominently on their hips.

There were panicked murmurs sweeping across the room, and heads flicked from the confused teachers, to the guards… a couple of people even glanced across at Alex.

Surreptitiously, Alex slid a hand into his pocket, and pressed speed dial number five. Glancing at the screen, he saw it light up briefly, saying "_Connecting_", and then watched as it went back to normal, with a tiny flashing beep in one corner, to show the distress signal was being transmitted. That done, he pressed speed dial three, and began to record the sounds around him.

Jack Douglas, noticing what he was doing, nudged his neighbour, and whispered, with disgust, that Alex Rider was texting, while they were in a room full of armed guards. Jack hadn't noticed the tense set of Alex's shoulders, or his clenched jaw, or the way his hands were shaking. He had no way of knowing that Alex's heart was pounding in his throat, and he couldn't possibly have known that Alex was thinking,

_Scorpia have come. They've come for me. Shit, shit, shit, what am I going to do? This isn't like normal, I've got six hundred other people – children – to protect, and about a hundred to defeat, and I've got nothing on my side except thirty bullets, and an MI6 technician! Shit!_

Alex ran his tongue over the switch in his brace, debating about whether to turn it on or not. He didn't do it – yet.

Two men swept into the room after one of the guards had sent something on a transmitter. Very politely, one of the said something to Mr. Bray, who had gone an unattractive greenish-yellow, and he shook his head feebly, but the other – who was short, and definitely had a strong strain of Chinese blood in him – lead him to a chair, and sat him down firmly.

The one who had spoken to him took the podium and the microphone. Alex already knew the Chinese man – this was Dr. Three. He recognised him from the photo he had seen briefly in Malagosto. He looked exactly like his torture textbook would lead you to believe.

The other man, however, was completely non-descript. He had blue eyes, neither very light nor very dark, and mouse brown hair. He was an average height, and an average build. He wore an expensive grey suit, and a silk tie, and could have passed for any successful businessman on an early lunch break. Except he was here, with a cohort of heavily armed guards, in school theatre.

"I'm sorry to interrupt you." He said, and his voice carried a very slight trace of an Australian accent – a slight flattening of the a's and a miniscule elongation of the r's, but practically nothing else gave him away. "But we are representatives of Scorpia, and we have a score to settle. One of your students has ensured that we settle it with you."

A flicker ran across the room, as heads turned to look at Alex. Everything strange at Brooklands was, after all, to do with Alex.

Alex himself looked down at his watch. With the late morning traffic, he had maybe three quarters of an hour before the MI6 agents could arrive. He had to keep everyone alive and calm for three quarters of an hour.

"What will you do, when you find this student of ours?" Mr Bray asked, weakly.

The Australian turned to him, and bowed his head a little to show that he had hears the question. "We will kill him." He said, faultlessly polite. Alex flicked the switch on his brace.

_Three quarters of an hour_ he told himself _three quarters of an hour, and MI6 will have sent their best agents here. I hope…_

Pulling his attention back to the school gym, he listened, with a sinking feeling of dread, as the Australian continued,

"Is there any student here who's going to stand up to me? Anyone?"

Alex was about to give himself up before they forced his hand, when Jack Douglas stood up, trembling but defiant.

"I will." He said, in a shaking voice. "What the hell are you doing here, anyway? If you're only bothered with one of us, why d'you have to bring the rest of us in, hey?" He moved to leave the row, but Alex stuck a foot out, and sent him flying. Jack turned on him, furious. "What did you do that for!" he yelled. "You stupid, arrogant bastard!"

"Shut up and sit down." Alex said, clearly. "If it's not you they want, keep quiet, and maybe they won't kill you." Jack paled, and the rest of the school stared at Alex in silent shock. "They want me, in any case. They're not interested in little school boys, are you, doctor?" he directed this at Dr. Three, who inclined his head, smiling slightly.

"Oh, and you're not a little school boy?" Jack sneered. Tom Harris, in the middle of the row, was froze in horror. He was the only one in the school who knew what was going on here.

"Alex hasn't been a little school boy for nearly a year now." The Australian broke in, gently. "Alex is the reason I have flown in from home, and the reason our organisation turned down ten million pounds. Alex is the reason we lost a further one hundred million last August. Alex is the reason we spent several thousand bugging your school." Most of the school looked guilty at this, and Alex only just managed to stop himself feeling smug. The Australian continued. "Alex is the reason several people are dead. If you think you know Alex Rider, I am going to enlighten you." He smiled at Alex with too much tooth. "Why don't you come up here, Alex?"

Alex shrugged, unmoved. "I'm fine here, thanks." He said, flippantly.

"It wasn't a request."

"Then don't phrase it like one." Alex replied. One of the guards moved towards him threateningly, and he sighed, beginning walking to the stage. "Well, if you're going to be touchy…"

The moment his foot touched the stage, a guard twisted his hand around behind his back, and forced him forward, towards the Australian, who smiled again, and turned back to the school body. All their eyes were fixed on Alex, slightly behind the older man, whose arm had been twisted until his hand was practically between his shoulder-blades, and his face had twisted in pain.

"I'm going to tell you a story about Alex…" The Australian said.

* * *

D'you like it?

I'm sorry, I've run out of time (yet again) to thank everyone, but thanks again for all your reviews, and I PROMISE I'll thank everyone personally next time. Just quickly:

**Goin2Hollywood, cutecess, little mimi, Reid's Girl, FiveForFighting09, madebyanelf, Logrus Mage, Alexi.Locke, Limit, maddy midnight, Eternal Rhapsody, Fae Folk, spikeywolvie494, Missmeliss4251, x-Lazart-x: **Thanks to all of you!

LOL, etta. xxx


	7. Chapter 7

Well, **WOW**. I was NOT expecting that response! I mean, sure, I thought, yeah, it's a bit of a cliffie, and yeah, that might annoy/upset/interest people, but, holy crap, I didn't expect this much excitement!

D'you know how many reviews I got for the last chapter? 50. FIFTY, people, FIFTY! Sheesh. D'you know my average for the chapters before that? About eighteen to twenty. I am SO not complaining here, but I was like, oh my god, _wow_. I was also ever so slightly incoherent, in case you couldn't tell. ;-)

I was debating waiting, and seeing how many more would come, but I've decided to disappoint you all instead, and update. Cos, after all, this chapter can't be as interesting as the last one, can it?

Lol.

DISCLAIMER: The only thing I have in common with Anthony Horowitz is his nationality. We don't share a name, we're not the same sex, and we don't share ownership of the Alex Rider books, either.

* * *

The entire room was completely silent. "Alex isn't a schoolboy." The Australian continued, in his low, pleasant voice. "He's a spy. Aren't you, Alex?" Alex stared sickly at him. "Aren't you?"

"No." He said defiantly, and seconds later, his head whipped back as the man backhanded him across the face.

"Are you a spy, Alex?"

"Yes." he whispered, reluctantly. His face was white, and the hand mark stood out, lividly imprinted across his left cheek.

"Speak up."

"Yes." He looked at the floor. "Yes, I am."

"You see?" the Australian said, triumphantly. "He's a spy. Alex has been working for your MI6 for nearly a year now, and in that time, he's killed several men and woman."

"I didn't kill them." Alex protested, weakly, and the man turned on him viciously.

"They all died because of you, Alex, how is that not killing them?"

"They died because of what they were trying to do!" Alex cried. "I don't randomly kill people because people pay me, I'm not like Scorpia!"

"We kill people who need to die, Alex, you're exactly like us." Dr. Three cut in.

"But what have the people you kill ever done?" Alex asked, "The people who've died because of me have all done it because of what they were trying to do. Julia Rothman…"

The Australian grabbed Alex's shirt front, and pulled him close. "Don't throw stones at people, Alex – it never does anything more than provide them with ammunition. Never forget you tried to kill Mrs. Jones yourself."

"On your orders." Alex retorted. While the man had been talking, he had come to a conclusion. He had to stall these people for twenty-five minutes, now, and he wasn't going to manage that by being a schoolboy. In other words, if innocence was going to prove no defence, he would have to see where intelligence got him.

"Why don't we let your friends decide about whether you're a dangerous murderer or not?" The Australian said, smoothly.

Alex shifted, uncomfortably. "Alright." He acceded. It wasn't like he had much of a choice.

"Good." He turned back to the podium, and the scared, confused eyes of several hundred school children. "The first man Alex killed was a benefactor of your country – Herod Sayle. The man who was giving you all of the Stormbreakers – I'm sure you remember him. At the same time, he took a pot-shot at the Prime Minister.

"The next man was a Headmaster not unlike your own. He was a man called Dr. Grief – a scientist who helped rich children to find some equilibrium again. After that was a man called Alexei Sarov, who wanted nothing more than to adopt Alex. Next came Damian Cray; you'll have heard his songs, I'm certain. Yassen Gregorovich, an innocent bystander, also died then. And, just a few weeks ago, he helped in the murder of a man named Nile, and a widow called Julia Rothman."

No one moved. It was so quiet, it almost seemed as if no one was even breathing. After a long pause, a cool voice said, from behind the Australian,

"It wasn't like that."

"Really, Alex?" Dr. Three oiled his way forwards. "Why don't you tell us what it was like?"

"You'll let me?"

"Certainly." Dr. Three waved him towards the microphone. "You're going to die anyway. Call this a… parting gift."

"Thanks." Alex muttered, and shook out his arm as with a wince as the guard released it. In a split second, he evaluated his options. If he didn't do this, there was every chance that things were going to get violent very quickly. If he did, everyone would know everything, and his entire life would change. Stuck between violence and an unwanted change wasn't a comfortable place to be, but it left him with very little choice.

Stepping forwards, he said, quietly, "I know that you're not fond of me at the moment, but I'd like it if you'd give me the benefit of the doubt on this. I haven't actually killed anyone, really. I tried, once, and re-defected back to MI6. I'm not a very good assassin."

There was a flutter of nervous laughter, and the Australian's fists clenched convulsively.

"The people he mentioned died because I found out about them." He continued, casually. "Herod Sayle's Stormbreakers contained a smallpox strain which would have killed all of you, if you'd managed to turn them on. I stopped him doing that – I didn't kill him. That was Yassen Gregorovich. He killed Herod Sayle, because Sayle had outlived his usefulness, I guess.

"As for Dr. Grief, he wasn't anything like Mr. Bray. The rich kids he was "helping" were all kidnapped, and replaced with clones of himself, which he was going to place strategically throughout the world, so he would rule the world. He was going to kill the originals. I was sent in under the guise of being the son of a supermarket king, and when he found out about who I really was, he was going to use me as a human dissection. He was going to cut me open, and see how long it took my heart to stop beating. So I'm sorry, but I really don't feel very guilty about him dying. He died when I drove a snowmobile into the helicopter he was in."

The hall was silent again now, rapt with attention. Alex swallowed, and cast a nervous glance at the men behind him. Shaking himself, he continued.

_Thirty minutes more_.

"General Sarov wanted to adopt me because I was like his dead son, Vladimir. But he was trying to blow up the nuclear submarines in Murmansk, and he threatened me with the horsewhip every time I said something he disagreed with. I said I didn't want to be is son, so he put a gun in his mouth and shot himself." His voice had taken on a deadened quality. "Damian Cray was going to use nuclear missiles to stop the drug problems of the world. It was going to re-write the map, cause the world years of suffering, and kill countless millions. I couldn't stop him, and in the end, he fell out of the Air Force One while it was in the air."

His face twisted for a moment in regret.

"I'm sorry about Yassen Gregorovich, though." He said, his voice sad and reflective. "Cray shot him. I know he was a contract killer, but he always gave me a chance. It's more than most people do."

That caused a spate of uncomfortable squirming across the room. Tom Harris, in particular, was bright red. Alex took a quick, hopeless glance at his watch. _At least twenty five more minutes_.

"I'm not sorry that Julia Rothman and Nile died. They lied to me, tried to kill me, and every other British school kid, and no one except these idiots are going to miss them. Forgive me if I'm not overly bothered." Alex knew immediately as he finished speaking that he had over-stepped the mark, and that something awful was going to happen as a result.

The Australian stepped forward, shooting a malicious glance at Alex, and grabbed him by the shoulder. "I think you've said enough." He hissed, and turned to the audience again. "Is Tom Harris here?"

Alex struggled violently as he said that, but the grip on his shoulder was painfully strong. "Leave him alone." He said, urgently. "Please."

"We're through making bargains with you, Alex Rider." The man said, venomously. "You're a child in an adult world, and you can't win here." He was so busy ranting at Alex, that he didn't notice Alex slid his watch off his wrist, and begin fiddling with it nervously. Those who did didn't pay any attention to it. "If I want to kill your friend, I'll do so – and _you'll watch." _He said that very close to Alex's face, but even as he did, Alex dropped the watch, and threw himself backwards, rolling as he landed, and ending up kneeling in a mock of the brace position.

For a few seconds, everyone thought that either Alex had gone completely mad, or that he was trying to protect himself somehow by taking the initiative. Jack Douglas whispered, in mild derision, that he would have expected a superspy to have taken the offensive rather than the defensive.

And then the watch exploded. The Australian, who had been stood right next to it, was taken with it, and before the guards could react, Alex was up, and his school watched in complete shock as he delivered a roundhouse kick to Dr. Three's knee, causing him to buckle in pain.

A gun seemed to sprout in Alex's hand, and he grabbed the man while he was vulnerable, and stuck the pistol in the most susceptible part of the man's neck.

"The knee is one of the best places to target, after all, isn't it, Doctor?" he asked, viciously. "You taught me how to kill, and told me that all you had to do to make me an assassin was find the right target. D'you want to test that theory?"

He looked around at the guards, who were stood uncertainly, with their hands on their weapons, all pointing them at Alex, but not making any move.

"If anyone fires anything, I can get a bullet in him before I die." Alex warned, and Tom marvelled at the change in his friend. This wasn't the Alex Rider he knew. _He_ was clever, quiet, almost retiring, with a gentle sense of sarcastic humour. This boy was lethal.

One guard, moving quicker than Alex had expected, grabbed one of the children from the lower school, and held his pistol to her temple. Unsurprisingly, the child began to cry as the man said, softly,

"I think we have a stand off."

He only just had time for that, when a shot rang out, and he crumpled. One of the black-clothed and black-masked men was pointing a pistol at his head.

He took off the mask, and Alex started in surprise.

"Walker?"

"Alex." He nodded, grimly. "You really do pick 'em, don't you?"

"What do you mean?"

"Second time you've got yourself into a fucked up situation." He said, smiling slightly.

Alex chose to ignore the jibe. "I'd never figured you for a double agent."

"Really?" Walker shot him a sudden grin. "I realised you were from the start." Alex only just resisted the urge to stick his tongue out at him. Apparently the stress of this particular situation, combined with the relief of being able to hand over responsibility, was really getting to him.

"Touching though this reunion is," Dr. Three gritted out, "I'd really like someone to _do_ something."

"I'm sure." Walker said, coolly. "But it's a little too late for that."

Even as he spoke, men poured through the doors. Alex looked at his watch. Apparently, MI6 had been quicker than he'd thought – and they hadn't sent many people, either.

Later Alex would reflect that, with the excessive violence which surrounded them, it was a miracle that the younger kids didn't freak out, and that none of the other pupils got hurt. Of course, _he_ was hurting – his face was stinging like hell, and from the fiery disjointedness in his arm, the guard who had twisted his arm around behind his back had almost certainly pulled some muscles there – but he wasn't really one of the students. In fact, he wouldn't have been surprised if Mr. Bray chucked him out for this.

* * *

Somehow, the MI6 agents disarmed the Scorpia gunmen without any "collateral damage". Someone relieved Alex of Dr. Three, and handed him a thermos of a hot drink; Alex had to make a physical effort not to collapse with relief and the sudden tiredness that washed over him as the adrenaline gave up its hold. He wasn't entirely sure what the thermos contained – he hadn't taken a sip yet, but the warm weight of the plastic in his hands made him feel better, and more normal. Less like the freak show he knew everyone was going to treat him as now.

He slipped the gun back into its holster, and made his way over to Walker.

"Hey." He said, quietly, once the older man had finished his conversation. He was beyond shocked to realise that he barely had to look up to the other agent.

"Alex." He nodded, smiling this time.

Alex looked away. "I was just wondering something." He paused, then continued, hesitantly. "How did you know these people were coming?"

"Jesus, you don't trust anyone, do you, kid?" Walker said, looking at Alex, the smile disappearing. "I know, because I sent a signal to these guys, when it looked like this was gonna get really nasty. They were just off the school grounds. Bout five minutes away."

"MI6 are working through you? I'd have thought you'd be working for the CIA, if anyone." Alex said, aiming for off-handedness.

He gave him a quick, puzzled frown, smiling slightly again. "These aren't MI6, kid. This is the CIA. Joe Byrne's been in contact with me ever since Scorpia recruited me."

"Joe Byrne?"

"You've met." It wasn't a question. "He liked you, you know. He thinks you're dangerous – certainly too dangerous to replicate the idea in America, and anyway, you'd have to train the kid since birth – but he liked you."

"I'm really not so sure that I liked him."

"Of course you don't." Walker shrugged, sitting down on one of the now-vacated seats. The "theatre" was empty of all other students save Alex, who was classed as an agent by these people anyway. "MI6 and the CIA aren't designed to have heads that people like. If you like them, chances are they like you, and then the point of spies would fall apart. They wouldn't be able to send you places where there's a high chance you could get killed."

Alex nodded slowly. "OK. I get it." There was a slight pause. "So…" he looked away, on the pretext of examining his sprained arm. "Have you been working for the CIA all the time you were with Scorpia?"

"Yeah. Deep cover. Like your Dad."

"You met him?"

"Aw, c'mon kid, be fair, do I look old enough to have worked with your dad? We weren't all recruited at fourteen." Walker was still smiling, though. "No, Byrne pulled a file on him and you for me, when I last got some "time off" from Scorpia. I read it. You've done some pretty impressive stuff, haven't you?"

"I guess." Alex shrugged, then wished he hadn't as his arm complained viciously.

"Hey, they were pretty rough with you up there, you should get checked over." Walker said, no longer smiling. He grasped Alex's chin with practised gentleness, looking at the bruise on his cheek. Alex wondered, abstractly, whether he had kids of his own, to be so gentle. "That's really nasty." He said, running one finger down it. "Though from what your file says, you've had worse."

"I've had worse." Alex agreed, as the doors slammed open, and more men in black poured through. They stopped short on seeing the Scorpia members effectively counteracted, in guarded groups, or disarmed and completely helpless.

One man seemed to recognise Alex, though Alex couldn't be sure he knew him, from such a distance.

"Cub? What's going on?"

"Wolf?"

"Wow, anyone gonna introduce me?" Walker put in, with only a vague hint of sarcasm showing in his voice, though his raised eyebrow spoke volumes. "Y'know, seeing as this seems to be one of those sweet reunions?"

"Er, Walker, this is Wolf. He, um…he was in my – well, I was in his unit when I was training. With the SAS."

"You were more comfortable around Dr. Three and James Sloane." Walker said, but he didn't sound amused. "You were certainly more coherent. Jesus, wolf man, what'd you do to him?"

"What are you, his father?"

"His friend." Walker said, coldly.

"Oh, sure 'friend'." Wolf sneered. "You've known him all of what, fifteen minutes at the outside? Pull the other one, Yankee."

"I met him when we were both with Scorpia. Alex and I were the two most useful double agents the CIA and MI6 ever had with Scorpia – except for maybe Alex's dad. We get on well. At least I didn't bully a fourteen year old kid!"

"Alex and I have a strange relationship." Wolf defended. "Right, Alex?"

Alex sighed. "Actually, yeah, we do. Wolf really helped me out once, and I really helped him out. We're not friends – but we get on OK. I'm just stressed, OK, Walker?"

Walker shrugged. "Whatever you say." He said, but he shot a glare at Wolf all the same.

"Blunt told me to debrief you on whatever it is that's happened now." Wolf said, looking over the carnage of the room. "But I think you'd better explain what it was first."

Alex sat down. He was starting to feel the heaviness that comes with stress relief mental exhaustion, and he wasn't entirely sure he was going to be able to get through this.

Somehow, he managed to make the report, and deal with everything, then Walker said, softly to Wolf,

"Alright, '_Limey'_, I think Alex needs to go home now."

"Oh, so now you're his doctor?" Wolf said, but there was no real malice behind his words. Briefly, he laid a hand on Alex's shoulder, and said, gruffly. "You did good, Cub." Alex smiled up at him, his eyelids already starting to slip shut. He couldn't remember the last time he felt this tired after one of his missions, but then again, after all of them, he'd been buoyed up by righteous indignation. Right now, he was just very, very tired.

As he left the gym, he was vaguely aware of hundreds of his interested school-mates watching him avidly – probably hoping for some amazing display of karate, or maybe some gun-slinging – but they were all disappointed. He was leaning heavily on Walker, who was keeping the other pupils away from him, and he got to the car without incident, except for a stumble, where Walker put out a hand and caught him. The last thing Alex saw, before he fell into the car, was Wolf, stood outside the gym, on a mobile to somebody. His eyes were fixed on Alex, and whatever the conversation was about, it seemed to be angry.

* * *

I know... I _know_ I said I would write personal thanks this time, but I honestly didn't expect so many reviews, so please forgive me. Nevertheless, a huge thank you to the following people:

**Crazy Kawaii, Isabel Fletcher, hpfan99 **(etc)**, keira, Pobbit, HeyAlex, Alexielle, bigteddy, maruthefairu, Mpro1, soaringeagle, Anne Phoenix, Selina, Von, BETH, Skullera, Jo-Fol, LilyFishAdiesguared, sodyk, Saynt Jimmy, wateva, FaeFolk, firelilly, Sun Knight, S.J.Stevens, dark-pyro-punk22, rosie5, angelkat2502, tvqueen64, Seku238, Sara Phoenix, musicsage, starsword, Boo26, Carline, Alexi.Locke, crash923, LAlaRACOON, rocks and glass, A Brighter Dawn, maddy midnight, writing-chick, FiveForFighting09, Pettyfer, MissMeliss4251, jumanji, cutecess, fireyhell, Bacon Yu a Pie, Reid's Girl, Eternal Rhapsody **and**Got Scots.**

You are all lovely people, and you deserve a place in heaven!

LOL!

OK, I'm finished. ami xxx


	8. Chapter 8

Thank you to all my reviewers; forgive the absence of blurb, this is as good as it gets the night before my GCSE results come out.

Enjoy!

DISCLAIMER: If it was mine, I wouldn't be getting my GCSE results tomorrow, now would I? I'd have had them _years_ ago!

IIIIIIIIIIII

Alex slept, on and off, for nearly three days after the excitement of the Monday. He had made his peace with Jack, thanked Walker for bringing him home – neither of them had alluded to how Walker knew exactly where home was for Alex – and stumbled upstairs to bed, not thinking about anything except sleeping for as long as he could.

He found, disconcertingly, that he had nightmares about what had happened. Alex had never had nightmares about his missions before, and this last one had been much less horrifying than most of his others. What was wrong with him now?

On the third day, when he woke again, he knew immediately that he wasn't going to get to sleep again. He didn't feel any different – just wide awake, and finally ready to deal with whatever it was that he needed to deal with this time. He showered, dressed, and went downstairs, his legs feeling heavy and uncertain with disuse.

Downstairs, Alex could hear voices in the kitchen – three voices, two of which he hadn't expected to hear again for a while.

Making his way to the kitchen, he looked at the people in there.

Wolf was the first to notice him, and he half rose, then sat back down again, and looked away. "Hey, Cub." He said, quietly, his eyes flicking up to meet Alex's. "How're you feeling?"

"Good." Alex nodded.

"Can't you call him Alex?" Jack asked, with a snap in her voice. "That is his name."

"Not for him." Alex told her, and every eye in the kitchen turned back to him. "He's never known me as Alex."

"Well, he should have done." Jack said, still infuriated. "All this crap about 'Cub' and 'Wolf', and 'Cat', or whatever. It's like you're all little children playing games." This last was addressed to Wolf, who met her eye and shrugged very deliberately.

"I guess, in a way, we are." He said, dropping the words like stones. "But I notice you don't complain when we're protecting your country. I notice you don't complain about what Alex achieves – only that it's him that has to achieve it."

"Hey, wait a minute there, wolf man." Walker put in, a little put out, "You can't just say things like that to the lady when she's let you into her house."

Alex hoped that he was the only one who heard Wolf mutter that it wasn't Jack's house, but Ian Rider's, so now it was Alex's house. It put a sarcastic smile on Alex's face, but he knew it would earn Wolf a slap from Jack if she heard, SAS operative or not.

Jack had flushed an angry red. "No child should be put through what your MI6 has put Alex through." She defended. "None."

"No." Wolf agreed, "But I don't think that Alex can go back to being a child now. He's grown up too much, he's seen too much. He's only a child in terms of years."

Alex himself moved into the kitchen, and got himself a drink. "He's right, Jack." He said, softly. "And I know what you're trying to do, but you can't blame Wolf for all of this anymore than you can blame me, or Walker. Just because he works for MI6…"

"The CIA never exploited you like MI6." She pointed out.

"Actually, yeah, they have." Alex shrugged. "So are you going to start blaming Walker now, too?"

Jack sighed, and looked at Wolf. "I'm sorry." She offered, tiredly. "I'm just angry."

"I know the feeling." Wolf muttered, and glanced quickly at Alex, then away again.

Confused by Wolf's behaviour, Alex turned to Walker. "So what're you doing here? I'd have thought you'd be long gone by now. That the CIA would have wanted you back in America to give your report."

"They already know. I've been debriefed and everything. They've already started negotiations with Scorpia to leave me alone."

"So you're staying here?" Alex said, casually. "Isn't that a bit dangerous?"

"Who for?"

"You." Alex turned away, and put his empty glass in the sink. "I mean, Scorpia have been watching me for a while now. I'm sure they know where I live – and they're bound to know by now that you're here with me."

"They probably do, yeah." Walker agreed, calmly. "On the other hand, this house is better guarded than Fort Knox at the moment, what with all the CIA and MI6 agents that are bound to be stationed "casually" around it. You've got a CIA and an MI6 agent in the house, and there's you, too. I doubt that anything they try will be successful, unless they launch all of their men against the house – and to be honest, I just don't think we're important enough for that."

"Maybe not." Alex agreed. "So am I just calling you Walker from now on, or do you actually have a Christian name?"

Walker threw back his head and laughed. "Is he always like this?" he asked Jack, still grinning.

"Generally, yes." Jack said, sourly.

"It must be interesting for you."

"You have no idea." She agreed, with a wry smile. Wolf hid a smirk.

"In answer to your question, kid, yeah, I've got a first name." Walker nodded. "Nathaniel."

"Nathaniel." Alex repeated, dubiously. "So – people call you Nat?"

"How did you guess?" Walker asked, grinning.

Alex sat down, and stared at the wooden table top. "So…" he said, not meeting any of the adults' eyes. "What happens now?"

"Nothing." Walker said, even as Wolf said, quietly.

"Blunt wants to see you." Alex's head snapped up to look at him. "It's OK. He's going to apologise."

"I don't think he's ever actually apologised to me" Alex said, flatly. "And I don't think he ever will, either."

"He will this time." Wolf promised. "He can't deny that he's in the wrong. I don't honestly think he's going to try. He's already in enough trouble as it is. Alan Blunt is many things, but he's not a fool – he knows when he's wrong, and when to admit that he's wrong."

"He didn't deny it when it was Damien Cray, either." Alex pointed out. "But that didn't change anything. He didn't really apologise for it – he just admitted that he was wrong."

"Damian Cray was that crazy guy who stole Air Force One, and the President's finger prints, right?" Walker said, leaning forward interestedly.

"Yeah." Alex nodded, briefly

"How involved in that were you?" he asked. "I read about it on your file, but none of your missions were there in any great detail."

"Well, officially, I wasn't involved at all." Alex said, bitterly. "But really, I was the one who stopped Cray from blowing half the world to hell."

"Look, Alex…" Wolf said, unwillingly. "I'm playing Devil's Advocate here, and I know it, but Blunt's really in between a rock and a hard place. He's screwed up big time, and a lot of people know it. The Prime Minister's putting a lot of pressure on him – especially after the business with Invisible Sword, where we were relying on you again, and the trouble with Eagle Strike, where we seemed to be working against you… Look, I'm no fonder of Blunt than you are, but he's the best there is at what he does, and, quite frankly, he might have to resign."

Alex was surprised by the feeling of sharp shock. He hadn't expected to be upset; Blunt had discounted him, exploited him and mistreated him. But on the other hand, Alex couldn't deny that, after the Stormbreaker affair, he had a strange sense of achievement after his missions. The mission against Herod Sayle had opened something in Alex, and no matter how much he wanted to pretend, he couldn't shut that down now.

Another Head of MI6 might be more or less unscrupulous. True, MI6 might have exploited him, but they made sure that he was relatively safe – as safe as he could be in the situations they put him in… and, to be honest, the situations Alex sometimes put himself in. For instance, hadn't he essentially himself into the situation with Damien Cray? A new head of MI6 might either get rid of Alex completely, or would treat him off-handedly. Either way, Alex stood to lose out.

And what the hell could he do about this?

"Oh." He said, finally.

"Yeah." Wolf said, heavily.

"Well, that's good, isn't it?" Jack said, uncertainly. "Now you won't have to go on any of those awful missions again, right? You can go back to being a normal kid again, Alex. You don't have to be a superspy."

"The problem is, Alex isn't a normal kid anymore." Wolf said, quietly. "He's been a spy, he knows what it's like. I don't think he can go back to being a normal kid."

"I think he can speak for himself!" Jack snapped.

"Jack, he's right." Alex intervened, gently.

"Sure." She said, angrily. "Alex, you've got a chance to get away from these people! You can leave them – and who cares if this Alan Blunt gets kicked out his job? He deserves it for what he's put you through…"

"If Alan Blunt leaves, MI6 will go through a huge upheaval. Security will be low for a long, long time." Wolf said, "And I really don't think we can afford that at the moment, especially with all the terrorist threats the UK is facing. If Alex wants to leave MI6, I don't think anyone will stop him now. But I don't think it needs to be at the cost of Blunt's job. In any case, who's to say that a new head wouldn't be even worse news for Alex?"

Jack deflated in the face of his pointed reasoning. "Fine." She said, "But I don't want you mixed up in this stuff anymore, Alex."

"I don't think I'd be whole without it." Alex told her, and she sighed.

"I knew you'd say that. Nearly a year of this, and then you suddenly realise how much you need it." She reached out one hand, and gripped his, tightly, smiling resignedly. "OK. But maybe you can come to some sort of deal? No really dangerous stuff until you're eighteen, and only three missions a year until you take your A-levels, maybe?"

Wolf laughed. "I don't think it works like that, with the really dangerous things… and if we've only got him for three missions a year, we're going to want to make the most of those missions. At least school will be easier."

Alex jerked upright. "Shit!"

"Alex, language!" Jack snapped.

"What's happening about school?" he asked, anxiously.

"Nothing." Walker said, entering the conversation again. "Alan Blunt spoke to me, briefly, because I'm staying with you, and, apparently I'm 'in your confidence'. You're gonna stay at the same school. Everyone there is in the process of signing your Official Secrets Act; the kids are allowed to tell their parents, but only if their parents have signed the Act too. It's a long process; Mrs. Jones was going to talk to your school as soon as you were 'well enough' to go back."

"So… tomorrow, right?" Alex said, with a sinking feeling. "Do I have to be there?"

"She wants you to say something to everyone. Obviously, no one can know that you're a spy, or everyone in the crime world and his dog is going to be out to kill you. She thinks you're the only one who can really impress upon your school that you could die." Wolf said, quietly.

"I have to stand up and talk to them?" Alex frowned. "Isn't that a really bad idea? I mean, they'll never take me seriously."

"They will." Walker said, casually. "They know quite a bit about your life, but they haven't all gotten past the glamorous part of being a spy yet. Tell them about the gritty bits, and the people trying to kill you, and then just tack on that if they open their big mouths, it's not just going to be you that dies, but them as well. The villains in real life don't leave their informants around where they can get twinges of conscience, and tell the good guys that they've informed."

"He's right." Wolf nodded, non-committal. "Most people will do anything to save their own skins, and look good at the same time. Make this seem to be about them saving you, then point out that it keeps them safe, too." He paused, and went on, off-handedly. "Oh, and one more thing, um… the whole school is being guarded. Just for a few weeks, maybe a month or so, until all this cools down. And I've been assigned to stay with you."

"What, even in lessons?" Alex said, surprised. "Isn't it bad enough that MI6 has bugged the place, now you're going to be there too?"

"Don't worry." Wolf said, smiling slightly. "It's just a precaution."

"OK. Is anyone going to tell everyone that I didn't just randomly vandalize the school?"

"I'm sure Mrs. Jones would, if you asked her. After all, MI6 really, _really_ owes you at the moment." Wolf shrugged. He looked at his watch, and stood. "OK, I've got to go." He carefully tucked his chair in, and looked at Jack. "Thank you for the tea." He said, quietly. "I'll, er… I'll be back later."

"Do you want a meal when you get back?" she asked, reluctantly.

"No, it's OK." He shook his head. "I'll eat out." He glanced at Alex, and Alex stood, too.

"I'll see you out." He said, "I'm sure Walker and Jack have got a lot to talk about. Aren't you from Chicago too, Walker?" so saying, he led Wolf out the house. Just outside the door, Wolf said, in a low voice,

"Look, Alex, I'm really sorry about what happened."

"It's not like it was personally your fault." Alex pointed out.

"No. But… it doesn't feel right, that you… that people got. I don't know how to say this. I was a real bastard to you when we first met, so I'm the last person who should be saying this to you, but…I never really got that you're just a kid." He held up a hand when Alex made to protest. "No, I know you've done stuff that no normal kid has, but you're still just a fourteen year old. And… that stuff you do, it's crazy. So I've, um… I've applied for a partnership. It means that I've got to drop out of the SAS, because partnerships only exist for MI6's spies, but…"

"Wait, what?" Alex stared at him. "What does that mean, a partnership?"

Wolf shifted uncomfortably. "It means that when you go on missions, I go to. Y'know, in some capacity. I still go on missions without you, but… whenever you go, I go, basically. It just…it gives us both a degree of security. I've seen your file too, Alex, I know how little you need a babysitter, and I'm not applying for this just so I can baby sit you. It's just, although sometimes a boy is ideal for the situation, sometimes working as a pair is useful – one acts as a distraction, the other does the work. Or you can do a two pronged attack. I'm sure this looks like I'm trying to coddle you, but I'm not. I'd just… even if Alan Blunt and Mrs. Jones don't feel guilty sending you on these things with next to no help, I do."

Alex stared at him, touched, in a bizarre sort of way. "Well, um… thanks. But, a lot of the stuff I do isn't exactly what MI6 sanctions…"

"I know." He grinned suddenly, and it changed his entire face. "Y'know…I think I can work with that. S'long as you tell me first. After all, Alex, we are partners, you know."

Alex grinned back. He got the feeling he was going to like Wolf, when he wasn't being an arrogant bastard.

IIIIIIIII

Well, maybe it'll be a bit anticlimatic, but oh well. It'll get better, with Wolf along to help Alex on his next 'mission'.

Has anyone else spotted the way the sequel's gonna go?

lol! ami. xxx


	9. Chapter 9

You've waited way too long for me to ramble here. Sorry about the long wait, and sorry it's not so good. Don't worry, the next wait will be shorter!

Saynt Jimmy? Here's your precious update. Now go and review everything else of mine, OK? (Lol!)

DISCLAIMER: Oh, I wish.

* * *

Alex couldn't remember ever being more nervous; in a strange way, he was more nervous now than he had been when he was stood up in front of the school, trying desperately to stall Scorpia. At least then, he'd had a reason to be so bold. Somehow, this talk just wasn't enough.

He'd tried to write something down – some notes, or at least an outline of his speech, because he knew, from experience, how much he hated being unprepared for anything – but he'd sat there, pen in hand, posed over a notebook, and had come up with… exactly nothing. After half an hour of futilely racking his brains for something to say, he'd given up, had a shower and gone to bed.

He tried again the next day, knowing from Wolf that Mrs. Jones had been informed that he was 'well enough' to give the speech. Alex had yet to meet anyone from MI6 other than Wolf since the Incident, and he was rather dreading it. In fact, there were moments when he wasn't sure which he feared more, the speech, or meeting the Heads of MI6. Those moments were always followed by blinding lucidity, in which he knew that he would take the Heads of MI6 any time. The speech, on the other hand, was terrifying.

Alex had had very little sleep the night before, given that Wolf had banged into his room at three in the morning, switched on the lights, and then said, 'Shit', and walked out again. Alex himself had sprung out of bed the moment the door opened, and had twisted his ankle in the process – hobbling around the house, trying to find an icepack, he'd banged into Wolf again, who had apologised awkwardly, and murmured something about 'forgetting his way around in the dark'.

All in all, Alex thought, limping up onto the stage behind Mrs. Jones, feeling conspicuous and uncomfortable, the only child among so many grim-faced adults, with Wolf look threatening behind him, this situation was exactly the sort of thing he generally avoided like the plague. That said, he felt that he could match any of them grim face to grim face. The thought made a hysterical little giggle rise inside him, as he looked out at the solemn faces of the rest of his school. The school he'd been isolated from, and to whom he was now a celebrity. Who were about to have their dreams severely trodden on. Alex was willing to bet that the truth of spying would dull his reputation as a superhero, once they knew it.

Wolf tried to give him a semi-supportive smile, without losing his tough-guy, bodyguard image; the effect was laughable, and made him look like he was in pain, but Alex appreciated the effort. Just as they broke eye contact, Mrs. Jones cleared her throat, and winced as the crude school microphone system blared. Obviously, Tulip Jones was used to more subtle technology.

"The first thing I have to do," she began, in the calm, reasonable voice which had always irritated Alex so much, but which seemed to have a calming effect on the excited children in the school body. Though, Alex reasoned, they weren't being told that getting shot at was really for their own good in that calm, over-reasonable voice, so there was no reason for it to irritate them. "Is apologise to you all. The incident a few days ago was a tragedy, though, thankfully, no one was killed; I apologise, on behalf of MI6, that you had to go through it. You are all extremely lucky that Alex Rider was able to defuse the situation as he was, though I am sure many of you will be thinking that you would never have been up against the situation had it not been for Alex Rider.

"I am sorry to tell you that such is not the case. The organisation responsible for your ordeal is one which targets to create an impact, not for revenge. Revenge is too personal, and making things personal in their business is dangerous. Too dangerous. Revenge may have been a motive, but it was far from being a deciding one. You have no reason to blame Alex as being a cause of what happened.

"I also have to apologise to Alex, as we have all misjudged him, but especially MI6, who should have known our operative better than to accuse him of acting in a fit of childish temper. You may think of your peer as many things – difficult, childish, or merely lazy, but I am sure you have worked out by now that he is far from it. As such, none of us should still believe that he is in any way to be held culpable for what happened here."

Alex hid a smirk. Not at the words, because, frankly, he was rather past caring what his school thought of him at the moment (if he cared, the thought of the speech he was about to make would probably drive him mad), but because the language she was using really required a translator, to put it into 'teenage', for the Brookland kids. Most of them were looking blank.

He sighed. Looked like he was going to have to repeat her, so they all understood.

"… misjudged him." She was saying, as he tuned back in. "There was a fight, and it did, indeed, damage two of your classrooms, but the man was sent by Scorpia, who had commissioned twenty four hour surveillance on the whole of Brooklands." That caused a rustle of whispers and a ripple of turning heads. "Alex, caught as he was trying to disable this surveillance, had the bad luck to be blamed for the damage it caused as well.

"As I said, I'm extremely sorry for all you have been through. But I have to stress the importance of keeping it to yourselves. Tell friends out of school, your cousins, your aunts, your uncles, anyone you know outside of your immediate family, will place them and you in danger." She paused, looking round the school, watching the blank, upturned faces. Sighing so slightly that the microphone didn't pick it up, she raised her voice again, and said, with a hint of resignation, "Alex has been asked to say some things to you, to clarify things in a way I might find difficult. After that, I'll be happy to answer any questions you might have."

Alex stood as she stepped down off the little podium. He felt itchy and uncomfortable in his school uniform, and awkwardly conspicuous in it, though he was dressed exactly the same as everyone else. He stepped towards the stand, his heart beating loudly in his ears, his hands clammy, and an uncomfortable, floaty feeling in his stomach. Wolf glanced at him, and gave him a strained smile; Alex tried to answer it, but knew he failed.

It was because he was looking at Wolf that he never saw who started clapping; the sound rang out across the totally silent gym, and his eyes snapped towards it. Before he could see who was clapping, others joined in, until the entire school was clapping him. He knew he was bright red with embarrassment, from the heat he felt on his face.

Tom was the first person to stand up, and he grinned at his friend, encouragingly. Then others followed him, and others, and others, until he got a standing ovation.

A standing ovation for doing his job. Things were really strange right now, Alex decided, trying to keep his thoughts light-hearted, so he could avoid the fact that he was scared out of his wits.

He didn't remember getting to the podium – he just knew that when he was on it, the clapping stopped, chairs and benches scrapped as nine hundred-odd school children sat down. An expectant hush fell, everyone looking at him..

Alex felt ill.

"Um… hi." He said, softly. The microphone squawked, and Alex flushed again. He shut his eyes, took a deep breath, and started again. "Hi." He said, more confidently. "Thanks for that. I, er… I can't say I was expecting it, but thanks, all the same. Umm… I guess I should elaborate on things, but I told you everything interesting a few d… when it happened." Was it bad he couldn't remember the exact day? It just didn't seem important right now. "You don't really need to know about what I've done, or why I did it, though I guess if you really want to know you can ask later.

"But really, I guess I've got to ask a favour of you. Because, I told you about saving the world, and stopping the bad guy, and it all sounds exciting and fun, right?" there were a few scattered nods, and Alex relaxed. It seemed people might actually be listening to him, which was nothing if not a novelty, now. "It's not. A few months ago, when I was, er… dealing with Herod Sayle, he found out who I was, and had me chained to a chair, where his henchman beat me unconscious. I woke up in a tiny room, handcuffed to a radiator. Like I said, after that, at Point Blanc, I was almost used for live, un-anaesthetized dissection, but I also got beaten up by Miss South Africa for Weight Lifting." Some awkward chuckling. Alex smiled a little himself, though he felt Wolf's tension behind him. Wolf, who had been there, and seen Miss Stellenbosch beating the shit out of him, and who had taken bullets for him. The smile slid off his face, and he looked strangely old as he continued, "I snow-boarded down a mountain on a fucki…" Someone cleared their throats in warning behind him, and he caught himself, correcting what he'd been about to say, "…on an ironing board, and had a run in with a TGV and a barbed wire fence, not to mention the gunmen on skimobiles. After that," he took a deep breath, "In Skeleton Key, near Cuba, I was nearly eaten by a great white shark, then nearly minced, then nearly beaten by a horsewhip, and kept in a cell-block by a lunatic who wanted to adopt me for no real reason. And then," this was harder for him than it was for them. After all, he'd lived it. "Damien Cray made me live through that computer game of his, whatever it's called. The one with the Aztec gods who try to kill you." There was a collective shudder. Everyone knew that game, and no one wanted to live it. "Then he tried to make me help him - nearly succeeded in making me help him – blow up half the world. And then, Scorpia nearly killed me. Three times, in fact. You saw the third one."

He paused. "I guess it all sounds really glamorous, right? Somehow, it doesn't seem it when you're doing it. It's all… I dunno… it's all about the bruises you've got, and how much it hurts, and the people you're trying to stop, and panic that you won't be able to, when you're doing it. And the bruises and cuts and whatever else make it that much harder. But it's not a movie; there's no one there yelling 'cut!' if you screw up. Then you die. I know, I've nearly done it a dozen times." A short, uncertain laugh from his school. "If you tell anyone," he took another deep breath, "You've gotta know that if you tell anyone, I'll die. One of the people I've pissed off – or one of their relatives, or a sister organisation, or someone – will hire a sniper, and kill me. Scorpia's done it once, and I spent a couple of months in a hospital getting over 'appendicitis' because of it. The bullet only just missed my heart, and I still need PT for it now." A brief murmur ran round the hall, but all too soon attention was fixed fully on him again. "But it's not just me who'll die. If you tell anyone, you'll die too. I've seen informants killed," he tried to count it mentally, then gave up, "Quite a few times. It's not a game you're playing, with this secret. It's my life, your life, your parents lives, the lives of your brothers and sisters. I've gambled with my life, and it's not fun. I really wouldn't recommend doing it."

Damn, when did he start sounding so serious? Brushing that thought aside, he continued.

"Really. Please don't tell anyone. I'm sorry I pissed you all off, by breaking up those two classrooms – I didn't mean to at all. But if you tell anyone, a lot of people are going to die, and you're one of them. I'm one of them. Your mum's one of them, and your dad, and anyone else close to you who might know about this." He swallowed. "Um… I don't think I had anything else to say."

Mrs. Jones stood up, and took control of the 'meeting' again.

"Does anyone have any questions?" she stopped Alex going back to his seat. "For Alex or me?"

Alex glared at her as a forest of hands shot up. Mrs. Jones pointed, and Alex supplied the name in a whisper.

"Joe?"

"Um, Alex…" the boy, who Alex recognised from the football team, though he was the year above him, "How did you get into – all that – in the first place?"

Alex looked at him for a few seconds, biting his lip, debating all the possible answers to that question. The truth? A half truth? An outright lie?

After a few moments of silence, he decided on the truth. After all, this was a meeting supposed to dispel any rosy ideas they might have of this, wasn't it? He took a deep breath, and said, slowly, "My uncle died, like you know. I… MI6 needed me to do something. They threatened to sell the house I live in, send the adult I was living with back to America, and put me in an orphanage if I didn't comply. I guess it's not really surprising that I did. I guess…" he shrugged, nervously. "I guess I could have backed out after that. I mean, I had enough on them, and enough records that if anyone had decided to dig into it, they'd have found something out. But… I dunno. Maybe I'm just a bit odd," a few smiles at that, "But it's kind of addictive. I mean, like BASE jumping is addictive. I guess I became a bit of an adrenaline junky, or something."

The next question surprised all of them, coming from behind them, and from Mr. Bray. "Are you going to continue?" he asked, his voice very quiet, and sounding rather worried.

Alex turned to him. "Yeah." He replied, also very quiet. "I think I am."

"You can't seriously expect me to allow that, now that I know why you're disappearing. Mysterious illnesses are things which a school can swallow, Alex. Allowing you to leave to fight mass-murderers and psychotic killers is a little less – acceptable."

"I can always pretend to have an illness, if you want." Alex offered, and caught the twitch of Wolf's lips out of the corner of his eye.

"Please don't be facetious, Alex. This is a serious matter. You're continued absences have been affecting your grades, and though your time with Mr. Gray has helped somewhat, you are far from being at the standard we expect for our GCSE students."

"MI6 will provide extra tutors for when Alex is at home." Mrs. Jones broke into the conversation, seeing Alex flounder. "It's not in anyone's best interests to have Alex fail his exams; especially not with a teenager as bright as he is."

"Of course not. But, as his school, we're expected to give him pastoral care of some sort. What sort of care could we be giving him, if we allowed him to take these risks?"

"It's a decision which is in Alex's hands."

"I disagree, Mrs. Jones. I would suggest that Alex is far too young, and far too involved in this to make such a decision." Someone else was speaking – Mr. Gray in fact. Next to him, Miss Bedfordshire, the school secretary, was nodding. "There has always been something strange about Alex – all the teaching staff have noticed and commented on it at some time or another. But, now that we know how dangerous it is for Alex, allowing it to go on is beyond me. He's not a super hero, whatever his peers may think. He's a fourteen year old. A school boy."

"I've wanted to drop out of this for a while." Alex interrupted, softly. "Just like I wanted to tell the truth. But – now you know the truth, I don't think I want to end it."

"Alex, you can't be expected to make a decision – this is all too sudden…" Mr. Gray started, and was surprised at the smile his student gave him.

"Thank you." He said, honestly. "But I've made a decision. It's taken me a while to come to it – a few weeks, in fact – but I'm pretty happy with it."

Mr. Gray sat back, a faint worried frown still on his forehead. "All right." He said, but his voice was tense.

Mr. Bray sighed. "I can't stop you; I haven't got the resources to fight your organisation. And yes, I'll keep you in the school, Alex, if only because things are hard enough for you without having to deal with changing schools, and all the added problems which you would have with that. But, for the record, I'm opposed to this."

Mrs. Jones nodded, a faint smile on her lips, then turned back to the student body. "Any other questions?"

The assembly lasted an hour and a half, in total, and when Alex got out of it, he felt totally drained. That said, he had missed enough school due to "illness", and he wasn't about to start cutting lessons just because he felt slightly dozy.

He waited behind, as did the MI6 guards, Mrs. Jones and Wolf, after the assembly.

Looking at Mrs. Jones, he couldn't help but swallow. What the hell was he supposed to say now? The speech – such as it was – was over, but now, he had another problem.

"So…" she began, quietly. "You're not leaving, then?"

* * *

Like I said, shit ending, but I hope you liked it. I finished it off in a rush, but please review!

LOL, ami. xxx


	10. Chapter 10

I have... nothing to say. Please review today, else I go back to school. Please don't say this is shit, ahnd that it's completely unrealistic that Alex would have an office. I mean - yeah, it is, but he's a fourteen year old super spy. Would someone please point out the blinding realism in that situation?

Sorry.

Soo... apart from that, ENJOY!!

DISCLAIMER: Well - no. Just... no. Bloody copyright.

* * *

Alex shrugged. "I guess not." He replied, very softly. "But…" he swallowed. "Some things have got to change."

She nodded. "I've known that for a long time." She told him, sounding falsely brisk and business like; Alex could see her worry – for him? – in the way her eyes flickered over him every so often, and lingered on the conspicuous bruise on his face. After a brief pause, she turned to one of the armed guards, and said, quietly, "The building's safe?"

"Yes, ma'am. No bugs, no eavesdroppers, nothing." He confirmed, and she nodded, shutting her eyes for a second in an expression which Alex couldn't read – relief? Resignation? Tiredness? Whatever it was, it didn't stay long, and when she turned back to him, her face was back in repose.

"As far as the more tangible aspects of what we owe you stand," she began "MI6 has set up an account for you, and has paid you the money we owe you for your last four missions. Your time with Scorpia, I'm afraid, isn't classed as a mission, though you undoubtedly did us a great service – more as a hostage situation. The second half of your time there is the part classed as an assignment." He nodded, grateful, in a way, that they were putting it so delicately. To hear his time with the organisation called "a hostage situation" by the woman he had tried to kill lessened at least some of the guilt he had been feeling about that.

"As I said to your headmaster, Mr. Bray, MI6 is going to be providing you with tutors in your off-mission time; we can't expect you to be keeping up with your school work if we're forever pulling you out of school. And it is important for us that you gain as good grades as possible, especially since we would obviously like you to work for us when you're older, as well." Alex nodded, his face impassive. The news was, after all, far from shocking. "Miss Starbright's visa has been renewed indefinitely; and we would like you to talk to one of our councillors."

"A councillor?" Alex looked faintly surprised.

"Not just about this particular incident." Mrs. Jones said, softly. "But also about your past assignments. I know that the incident on Skeleton Key, and then in Murmansk was particularly difficult for you, and I think it would be good for you to talk about it to someone."

"Alright." He nodded, seeing the logic in her argument.

"We've also taken out insurance on you, for you." Alex stared at her, and she sighed. "Alex, you already know extremely well how dangerous this work is; the likelihood of you getting some sort of permanent injury is high, and if such a thing were to happen – it shouldn't, but it might – then, by the terms of the insurance, we are required to pay you compensation. There is also a pension scheme, in case of an injury which might put you out of action – any sort of action – permanently. If you still want to stay, after I've told you all this, we'll put you on MI6's payroll, just as your uncle was."

Alex was silent for a few moments.

"In the past few months – I think I've been working for you about five or six months, haven't I?" she nodded.

"Six months and a half, yesterday, to be precise." She said, and he nodded himself.

"OK. Well, in six months, I've been on five missions for you." She nodded again. "You've said yourself that I'm missing a lot of school work which I can't really afford to miss, and Jack – that's Miss Starbright – suggested that there might be some way of limiting the number of assignments I get per year."

Mrs. Jones thought about it, for a few moments.

"It's a good idea." She admitted. "I'll talk to Alan Blunt about it." She paused, and then gestured Wolf forward. "You doubtless already know that Wolf has applied for a working partnership with you." Alex glanced at Wolf, who met his eyes, but didn't smile. "That has all been agreed on, and I have some paperwork for you to sign." She put her hand out, and an innocuous brown paper file was handed to her. Alex took it as she gave it to him. "In there is your ID. It's been designed to look like nothing more than a standard photo ID card, but the MI6 scanners will pick up on the differences allowing you through, should you need to contact us. There are also statements of your missions, which we need you to sign, and a few other things, concerning your agreement to the agent partnership. They will go into your office when you've signed them."

"My office?"

"Yes." She sighed. "All MI6 agents have them, no matter what their status is. Some of them aren't in the Royal and General Bank – it's not large enough for that. Some are just in generic office blocks. Most, as I'm sure you know, are just in the more famous headquarters, on the Thames. As a teenager, yours is in the Bank itself for security reasons, but apart from that, the fact that you're a teenager is irrelevant – if you're on our list of workers, you have an office."

"Oh."

"It's protocol – obviously we don't expect you to do paperwork, you're not old enough to work legally yet, so as far as a "job" goes, this isn't one; the more 'job-like' aspects of it aren't yours to deal with, and any money you earn from it is, I'm afraid, frozen until you're legally an adult, and it's necessary that we only take a certain amount of time a year – at some point even we have to bow to the law, and we can't risk anything happening to you. Not now. Not now that you're so high-profile." She paused, again. "We're trying to give you as many of the benefits as we can, and an office is one of them." She said, finally, rather slowly. "You'll be given the key the next time you come in. There will be paper work after your missions, so locking it is essential, but I'm sure that Wolf will deal with most of the paperwork, as the most experienced of the two of you – and the one with the most time."

Wolf nodded, but didn't say anything.

"There is going to be further training, unless you object." She said, rather carefully, Alex later thought. "Not physical, as I'm certain that, in terms of physical fitness, you're in good condition; this is for more general use. Smithers tells me he gave you the gun you used the other day, on Mr. Three, and Martins said that Scorpia had been training you to shoot. I suppose the logical step, now, is for us to take up where they left off. We have a far more thorough training programme than Scorpia. And we would prefer you to start learning a second martial art – we have a variety of instructors from different branches which you could choose from. Our karate black belt would like to see you train as well, and with your wound, we think it would be wise for you to train with him for the time being."

Alex nodded, seeing the sense of it.

"There will be other training." She said, softly. "Training on poisons, and antidotes, far more thorough first-aid training, etc. But you have to remember, Alex, we're not training you to kill. You're a spy, not an assassin."

"Yes." He nodded. "I know."

"We are going to be sending you on far more information based missions, rather than giving you assignments which require you to stop someone from doing something. If it ends up as such, obviously, you can act as you see fit."

"Thank you." If irony tinged his words, it was unintentional. "Is it going to be a problem, that I'm 'high profile'?" he asked, diffidently.

"It shouldn't be. Your school will know about you, but they can't tell anyone, and when you leave school, we know that you'll all go different ways. Most of them will forget about Alex Rider as anything except a vague memory of a school friend of theirs who doubled as a spy." He nodded, without saying anything, and after a pause, she nodded to him by way of a farewell gesture, and seemed about to go, when he said, a little reluctantly,

"Is Blunt resigning?"

She shook her head. "No. But had you decided to leave – had you taken any other course but this one, in fact – I'm not so sure that he wouldn't have had to."

Alex sighed. "I guess… he's the best for the job, right?"

"Yes." Mrs. Jones said, decisively. "In five years, there will be someone else better suited to it. But for now, there's no one. And without an alternative, we would be leaving ourselves dangerously vulnerable, if he was forced to resign." Another pause. "Thank you." She said, very, very quietly. "And, Alex… I _am_ sorry."

"Yes." He nodded. "I know."

* * *

The moment Alex stepped out of the gym, Tom was there.

For a long, long moment, he didn't say anything – he didn't even look at Alex. Finally, he looked up at him, through his unruly fringe, and said, very quietly,

"I'm really sorry, Alex."

Alex sighed. "Yeah. It's OK."

"It's really not."

"It is…" Alex began, when Wolf said, quietly, behind him,

"It's not. He knows it, and I know it, and if you don't know it, then that's just sad."

Tom glanced at Wolf, nervousness written in the set of his mouth, but standing his ground. When he next spoke, his voice was steady. "It wasn't OK. I should have trusted you; you're my best friend, and even with all the stuff that's been happening to you at the moment… I should have believed you. I'm sorry."

"I'd say don't do it again," Alex began, a little warily, "But I'm really kinda hoping you won't have to."

Tom offered him a quick smile. "Yeah. Me too."

That was the end of the argument, such as it was. Alex introduced Wolf to Tom, and the two of them stared at each other, each treating the other with cordial wariness, while Alex quietly ignored the coldness between the two, and tried his best to keep up a conversation on his way to the next lesson.

"Why aren't you in lessons?" he asked his friend, bored of the awkward silence.

"I, er… I hid. I really needed to apologise."

"OK."

There was another long, uncomfortable pause. "So, Wolf… d'you know where you're going next?"

"I've got to formally resign from the SAS, which I haven't done yet." The man said, easily. Obviously he was far more practiced with awkward situations than either of the teenagers were. "And then – well, I'm newer to the whole 'MI6 spy' business than you are, so I guess… I've no idea. Wherever they send me, I guess."

"Why did you resign from the SAS?" Tom asked, curiously.

"That's classified." Wolf said, blandly, and Tom looked faintly taken aback.

* * *

The next lesson – which just happened to be French – was monumentally awkward. Tom, as usual, was in the bottom set, and, as languages were the only subjects in which Alex's set hadn't changed, they'd separated once they reached the language schools.

Alex went into the classroom with a muttered, "Sorry I'm late," but it was only once he'd sat down that he realised the lesson hadn't started again. Wolf, who had quickly installed himself at the back of the classroom, and was now doing a good job of being inconspicuous, despite the initial curious glances, smothered a grin as he saw Alex's face take on a look of utter resignation.

"Alex. _Ou etais-tu?"_

_"Je suis desolé, Madame." _Alex said, with an inward sigh. "_J'ai du parler avec… quelqu'un."_

"_D'accord_." She nodded, but she, just like everyone else, knew that the chances of getting a normal lesson with this particular boy sat in the classroom at this particular time were pretty small. "_Bien, tournez, s'il vous plait, à page quatre-vingt dix-huit, où nous parlons de la santé…"_

Alex did, indeed, turn to page ninety eight, but the lesson was mainly between Alex and the teacher, as everyone else was too busy staring at Alex himself.

They were going through a list of questions which, the teacher said, were likely to come up in their GCSE orals, each question being answered by a different person, and Alex watched, with a twinge of guilty amusement, an expression of despair come over her face as she reached him, and read out the question:

_"Qu'est-ce que tu fait pour rester en forme?"_

The entire class was silent. For what felt like the eightieth time, Wolf, at the back of the classroom, felt a grin steal onto his face. Who knew that watching a fourteen year old spy try to be normal could be so fun?

"Um…" Alex floundered for a few seconds. "_Bien, j'essaie, er… ne pas manger beaucoup de fast-food, et, aussi, je fait beaucoup de sport, comme le football, le rugby, et le, er… le karate._" A few scattered grins, and someone piped up,

"Oh, come on, you do stuff a hell of a lot more exciting than that!"

"_Sois silente, _Emma. _As-tu fini, _Alex_?"_

He nodded, and the lesson, thankfully, moved on.

* * *

When the bell rang, though, he found himself swamped with people, crowding round him, and asking question upon question. From being the leper, the outcast, he had become the celebrity – and he wasn't sure that he liked it.

"You said we could ask you questions later…"

"…Can you recommend me to MI6?"

"Why did those people want to kill you so badly?"

"Who was the man who shot that other guy?"

"How did those people know to come in then? Were they from MI6?"

"Are you ever going to stop?"

"Are you going to be an agent when you're older, too?"

"Aren't you a security risk, now that we all know? I mean, you can't be a secret agent anymore, you're hardly a secret…"

"Who's this guy with you?"

Wolf elbowed his way through to Alex's side, where the boy was standing in the centre of the crowd, looking totally thrown.

"That guy with him is telling you to get out of his face." He growled, glaring at the boy who'd asked the question. The crowd went silent.

One brave girl said, a little pugnaciously, "Why should we listen to you? Alex said he'd answer our questions, didn't he?"

Wolf stared at her impassively for a very silent second or two. "You should listen to me because I'm not one of the people who ostracized him for doing something he didn't, without even bothering to ask him whether or not he did it, and I'm not one of the people who's shallow enough to treat him like gold now that he's done something for me." There was another brief, uncomfortable pause. "And because I'm three times heavier than you, and four times better trained." He added, beautifully off-handed.

"Are you threatening me?"

"Not you specifically." Wolf said, with a careless shrug. "I'm threatening all of you. I'm here to look after him; threatening you is my job at the moment. So, back off, and go to whatever lesson it is that you're supposed to be in now. If you've got questions, ask them when there's actually some time."

The crowd dispersed, with some muttering, and Alex looked up at Wolf, shaking his head.

"You really lay it on with a trowel, don't you?"

Wolf shrugged, offering him an awkward grin. "Intimidation is my strong point." He said, a little deprecatingly. "But, you know… you're gonna have a problem with that 'I'll answer your questions later' thing. You really shouldn't have said that…"

"You think I don't know?" Alex said, resignedly. He paused, before saying, a little hesitantly, "But, thanks. For all this. I mean, for being…"

"If you say nice, I swear to god, I'll hit you." Wolf said, ominously. But after a few seconds, he added, equally awkwardly. "It's OK, though. I guess, I kind of owe you too. Y'know… for the plane thing."

"Then I owe you for the stopping Mrs. Stellenbosch killing me thing." Alex pointed out.

"Damn straight, you do." Wolf said, jokingly. "One bullet in my arm, and a second in my leg – it's painful." Alex smiled, tensely.

"Honestly – I know."

"Yeah, I guess you do." The humour had leeched out of the man's voice. "Oh, did you get my card?"

"Yeah, I did."

"Hmm. I'm never sure. Postal Service in Iraq wasn't great at the time, for obvious reasons."

"War does tend to do that, yeah." Alex agreed, with a grin. He stopped outside the next classroom, and sighed. "Chemistry. They're going to be waiting for me to blow something up. I can just tell."

"Tell you what, I'll blow something up, and you can run away while they're not looking." Tom said, skidding to a halt next to him.

"Don't tempt me." Alex said, darkly, before taking a deep breath and opening the door.

* * *

The most surreal experience of the entire day, Alex was sure, was coming out of his Chemistry lesson, and seeing armed guards patrolling the corridors. Apparently, everyone else was so shocked, they forgot to pay attention to Alex; until he sat down in the canteen.

He tried to eat, but the number of questions he got made it difficult. Every time he thought it was safe to try and take a bite of his sandwich, someone else would come up to him, with another question for him to answer, or to try to answer.

"You know," Tom said, in a one of the brief, brief pauses, "You should compile a list of the most frequently asked questions, then write down an answer to each one, and stick it on the notice board in the entrance hall."

"Yeah, he could do that." Wolf nodded, "But it's not exactly private, is it? Anyone could read it, and think, 'oh, hey, look, this kid must be a spy, let's find him and kill him!' Which would really defeat the entire purpose of making everyone sign the Official Secrets Act, because Alex would have undermined it himself."

By this point, someone else was talking to Alex, and Wolf and Tom did the only thing that they were even vaguely united in; glaring at the person asking the question.

"Why did you bother standing up for us? I mean, we were so…"

"Bitchy?" Wolf suggested, muttering.

"…Awful to you." The boy ended, flushing bright red.

Alex sighed. "I did it because that's what I've been trained to do. And because I don't want to see any of you die; I've seen enough of that. I didn't want it happening in my school gym."

"What sort of training did you have?" the boy asked, eagerly.

"Classified." Wolf drawled, heavily, intensifying his glare. The boy wilted, nodded, and moved away. Alex sighed, again.

"You're really not very nice to them, are you?"

"That's not my job, Cub." Wolf pointed out, and turned back to his sandwich.

A girl, who had overheard their little exchange, said, curiously, "Why d'you call him 'Cub'? Is it, like, a nickname, or something?"

Wolf raised an eyebrow at her. "A _nickname_?" he asked, incredulously.

Alex resisted the urge to kick his 'bodyguard' under the table. "It's my codename. We were all given animal codenames, and mine was Cub because… well, 'cos I was the youngest."

"Oh." She glanced nervously at Wolf, and moved away. Hastily, Alex took another bite of his sandwich, and when someone else tapped him on the shoulder, he nearly choked on it, throwing up an arm in self-defence, and desperately trying to swallow his mouthful.

"Calm down." The boy speaking was a sixth former Alex didn't recognise. "I'm sorry."

Swallowing, his heart hammering wildly in his throat, Alex nodded, breathing harshly. "Sorry." He nodded.

"Look, I was just wondering… how would I go about getting into MI6?"

Alex looked at him, glanced at Tom, and looked back up at the sixth former. He paused, then began, finally, "Well, firstly, make sure all your living relatives die," he said, deadpan. "Hopefully, one of them will have had something to do with MI6; then, make sure you beat up two of their men in a junkyard – it also helps to have a black belt in karate, or something, and preferably speak a couple of languages. Then, when they call you into their office, try and get into the next door office by leaping out a window and grabbing a flag – that'll really get their attention. Then, they can shoot you with a sleeping dart, take you to Wales, and blackmail you into taking a job with them. Honestly. It's foolproof."

"I was only asking…"

"Look, I don't know how you'd go about getting a job with them." Alex said, tiredly. "That's what happened to me. If you do that, they'll probably give you a job."

The boy looked vaguely horror struck. "That's how you started working for them?"

"He can't tell you that." Wolf said, pleasantly. "Sorry."

The boy glanced at Alex, who shrugged. He didn't stay long after catching Wolf's eye again.

"See?" Wolf said, stretching. "That was – nice."

"Yeah." Tom muttered, "Right up to the bit where you glared him into submission."

Alex sighed. Today looked like it was going to be a long, long day.

* * *

PLEASE FEED THE AUTHOR.

French, rough translation: Alex, where were you? "I had to talk to someone" "OK. Well, turn please to page 98, where we're talking about health..." "What do you do to stay healthy?" "Right, I, er... I try not to eat too much fast food, and also, I do a lot of sport, like... rugby, football... karate..." "Be quiet, Emma! Have you finished, Alex?"

My French, despite taking it for AS-Level, is a little ropey, occasionally. But, hey, my Spanish is worse, so thank god for small mercies, right?

So... apart from the French, do tell me. Hate? Love? Not entirely sure?

LOl!

ami. xxx


	11. Chapter 11

It's very short; it was meant to be the last chapter, but, a) I don't really like odd numbers, don't know why, so I didn't want to end it on chapter 11, and b) I wanted to get the update out as quick as possible, so I did it this way. It's a filler chapter, really, and not that good, but, meh. It's an update. Don't look a gifthorse in the mouth, people!

DISCLAIMER: I've finally saved up, and bought those books. A beautiful boxed set edition.

* * *

By the time Saturday arrived, Alex was exhausted. He'd answered more questions than he'd thought were possible, and dealt with more requests to work with him, get introduced to MI6, and apologies than he thought should be legal; and now, he had to deal with counselling.

Mrs. Jones secretary had rung, and had asked – actually, properly asked – whether he could come in on Saturday to meet with the counsellor they'd arranged to come and speak to him. This man – a Mr. John Richards – was apparently one of the best, and specialised in child trauma.

Alex didn't know whether to be more disturbed that he was a victim of child trauma, or that MI6 actually acknowledged it.

But, this Mr. John Richards was the reason Alex was, at this moment, having his new ID card examined – it had arrived, hand-delivered, obviously, the day after Mrs. Jones had talked to him – and being escorted up to a room he'd never seen before; a comfortable room, where the desk had been pushed into a corner, to make room for a large sofa and armchair.

Mr. Richards was sat on the sofa. He was a tall man, quite thin, with small, frameless glasses, and an impeccably neat black suit. He stood up as Alex walked in, holding a hand out, and saying, in a warm, quiet voice,

"You must be Alex Rider."

Rather warily, Alex nodded, shaking the man's hand gingerly, and gesturing to the armchair. "May I…?"

"Please do."

They both sat down, and Alex watched the man for a few seconds, as he leant forwards, taking his glasses off and laying them on the table.

"I'm not going to lie to you, Mr. Rider." Richards began, finally, straightening and looking at him, seriously. "I think that, at this point in your mental development, what you've been through, and, above all, what you've been through with so little support, may have done irreparable damage to your psyche." Alex opened his mouth to speak, and Richards held up a hand, smiling to show that he wasn't angry at nearly being interrupted. "But, hopefully, it won't be as serious as I fear it will be."

"I don't think it's irreparable." Alex ventured, slowly. "I mean, I wouldn't be able to – well, be normal, if it wasn't, right?"

Richards considered it. "From what I've read about you, I don't think you _are_ normal." He said. "I think, in terms of your mental capacity, you are an extremely intelligent teenager, with an ability to analyse, understand situations, and create solutions which is, for someone your age, little short of unique – but what you have lived through has almost undoubtedly left scars on you."

"So – you'll be able to help?"

Richards smiled. "I can try. So, Alex, I want to talk to you about your first assignment. The affair with the Stormbreakers…?"

* * *

The interview with Richards went on for nearly three hours, until the man thought that he had managed to isolate a few of the problems in Alex's psyche. It wasn't what Alex would have termed a 'comfortable' three hours – in fact, it was exhausting, having someone delve through his mind, but he did come out feeling a little clearer, so he supposed it wasn't totally wasted.

He walked into the foyer, determined to get something to eat – it was one o'clock, and he hadn't eaten much that morning – then go back home, and sleep for at least a week. Unfortunately, he got hijacked before he even made it out the door.

"Cub!" he turned to see Wolf striding towards him, and bit back a groan. In the few days the man had spent with him at school, he'd come to appreciate him, even to enjoy his company to a certain extent, but he really didn't feel he could deal with him right now. Luckily for him, Wolf took one look at him, and said, "D'you want to go and grab something to eat? You look exhausted."

Alex nodded, and let Wolf steer him out of the building, and over to a nearby McDonalds.

When they finally sat down with food, Wolf said, slowly, picking up a chip and staring at it for a couple of seconds, "I, er… I got some information on partnerships."

Alex tried to look interested, and knew that he failed. "Oh?"

"Yeah. Nothing that you couldn't have guessed. Some of it won't apply to us, anyway, because of the age difference. Like, mission write ups. We're both supposed to do reports, so there are always two points of view on a mission. You won't have to do that, unless I spend the entire thing unconscious, for some weird reason." He paused. "MI6 is – different. A lot different to the SAS."

"Well, yes." Alex was starting to feel a bit better for the food. "It's a lot less military, and there's a lot less cam cream (1)."

"Yeah." He bit the chip in half, and chewed, thoughtfully, for a couple of seconds. "So, I'm training with you, for the moment."

"Training?"

"You know. The training Mrs. Jones mentioned – shooting, poisons, antidotes, a new martial art, languages…"

"I'm learning a new language?"

"Apparently. Something about Chinese was mentioned…?"

"Oh. OK, then." He shrugged, and took a bite of his burger. "If that's what they want."

"Yeah. I'm doing that with you." There was silence for a few minutes, until Alex swallowed his mouthful, and said, quietly,

"I meant to ask – where's the accent from?"

"What?"

"Your accent." He clarified, stealing some of his new partner's ketchup. "Where's it from?"

"Oh, right. Argentina. My father's from Buenos Aires."

"Ah." There was silence for a few minutes, until Alex said, finally, "So, you speak fluent Spanish, then?"

"Yeah." He nodded. "Spoke it at home a lot." He paused. "Your file said you speak German, French and Spanish?"

Alex nodded. "Um, yeah." This was, without a doubt, the most awkward conversation they'd had since Wolf had applied for the working partnership. Alex supposed it was easier to find things to talk about when you were trying to hold off curious school children. "My uncle, he – he was pretty keen that I should learn to be a spy." He said, finally. "I had extra lessons, to learn languages. We used to go places, Madrid, Paris, Berlin, wherever. He'd make me do all the talking, so I learnt the language properly."

"How old were you then?" Wolf was frowning, but Alex couldn't think why.

"The first time I remember, I was about four." He said, quietly. "So… if your father's from Buenos Aires, how come you're living in England?"

"He was a diplomat. He lived here for twenty three years, and when he retired, he decided to stay." Wolf told him, absently. "Didn't you get my file?" Alex shook his head. "Damn." The older man bit his lip. "I'll try and get it to you, OK? You should know stuff like this already."

"Stuff like, how old you are?"

"Yes." Wolf frowned. "You don't know?"

"Wolf, I don't even know your real name."

Wolf sat back in his chair. "Shit. Right, OK. My name's James san Luca. I'm twenty nine. My dad's from Argentina, my mother's from Kensington." Alex smirked a little; Wolf just shrugged in response. "I've got two older brothers, and an older sister. My sister's a lawyer, one of my brother's is a banker, the other's a builder." Alex raised his eyebrows. "That's what he wanted to do!" Wolf defended

"And, you decided to be a soldier – why?"

"I don't know." He shrugged. "I just did." He glanced at his watch. "I've got to go. I'm – well, I've got to explain to the rest of my team why I'm leaving the SAS."

"D'you still work with Snake, Eagle, and Fox?"

"Yes." Wolf nodded, standing up. "And, from when I last spoke to them, they're – annoyed. With me, I mean. I think they think I'm doing this on the spur of the moment."

"I'm kind of agreeing with them." Alex muttered, standing up as well.

"Oh, no, Cub." Wolf gave him a sudden smirk of his own. "I thought this through. But, you're going to have to work on your issues with following the rules."

"My 'issues with following rules' have never been a problem." Alex retorted. "Mostly because there aren't any. If you think there are rules, _that_ might turn out to be the biggest issue we have."

"Whatever you say." They'd made it to the street by now, and Wolf grinned at him, properly. "I'll see you on Monday." Alex gave him a questioning look. "We have tests."

* * *

(1) Cam cream. It's lovely stuff; my CCF (Combined Cadet Forces, in case anyone is wondering) experiences have taught me to loathe and fear the disgusting goop. It comes in three attractive shades – green, brown and black. You smear it over your face, and, hey presto!

Well, theoretically. If you're practicing this 'army stuff' in a town, like I was, it's not really that camouflaged. You just look very stupid. Take my word for it. Cam cream – or camouflage cream, as most 'army' type people call it – is nasty. Nasty.

Right. Well, that's all for now, folks. Go read some of my other stuff. :-D

Ami xxx


	12. Chapter 12

Sorry for the short chapter and the long wait! I have AS levels to take, French and Spanish Orals to do, and incidentally, my father decided to put his back out. All in all, it's been fun, recently.

Oh, and a couple of people have been asking me whether Alex is going to have a German lesson. I don't know about Brooklands, but at my school, it wasn't possible to take both German AND Spanish...

...OK, lame excuse. Put it this way, Alex will have a German lesson the moment I learn to speak German. i.e. it's gonna be a few years yet, folks.

Oh, and someone mentioned that Alex was too young to be doing coursework. They did so very politely, and thank you very much for pointing it out, I'm really grateful! And, I here and now admit my total ignorance of state schools; but a lot of my friends go to state schools, and they all did coursework at fourteen... maybe just, different schools, different methods?

Thank you once again to all my lovely reviewers!

DISCLAIMER: Nope, still not mine. Walker books are WAY overprotective of their authors' copyrights...

* * *

Sunday started off as a nice quiet day, with Alex wrestling with his homework before doing the gardening, and Jack cleaning upstairs.

It didn't stay quiet for very long.

At about eleven, there was a ring on the doorbell, and Jack called down to Alex,

"Could you answer that? I'm still in my dressing gown…"

Alex did as she asked, going to the door, pulling it open, expecting to see Tom, or possibly Jack's new boyfriend, Dan, or Dave or whoever, and instead coming face to face with…

…three glowering SAS, and a faintly apologetic looking Wolf.

Wolf shrugged at Alex. "They made me do it." He told him, sounding faintly petulant.

Alex raised an eyebrow at him. "How old are you? 'They made me do it', indeed." He looked at them for a long second, before standing aside to let them in. "I s'pose you'd better come in…"

"Alex!" The call came from upstairs, where Jack was working. "Who is it?"

"Wolf!" he yelled back at her. "He brought some… friends!"

The announcement was met with silence, so he ushered them through to the kitchen. Once they were sat down, looking rather ill at ease – except Wolf, who looked surprisingly calm about the whole thing – Alex said, politely,

"Coffee?"

"It's obvious who's going to be doing the cooking in their partnership." Fox said, under his breath. "Thanks, coffee'd be great." He told Alex, out loud, trying to avoid Wolf's sudden glare.

Awkward silence descended once more upon the kitchen, as Alex boiled the kettle, and got out the cafetiere. Finally, Snake spoke up.

"Look, Cub – we just wanted to talk to you. About this partnership between you and Wolf…"

Alex turned to him, crossing his arms defensively, and saying, rather disbelievingly, "That sounds worryingly like you want to make sure that I have honourable intentions."

Fox shrugged. "It's not your intentions we're worried about."

"You're worried that Wolf doesn't have honourable intentions?" Alex asked, guilelessly, turning away to make the coffee. "I'm sure that even if he was gay, he wouldn't go for someone as young as me."

When he turned back with the full cafetiere, he noticed that all of them looked a little taken aback at that. He suppressed a grin.

"That wasn't _quite_ what we meant…" Snake said, carefully.

"But it was a little what you meant?" Alex asked, determined not to make this easy for them, for no other reason than revenge. It was fun to give them back a little of the awkwardness that they'd given him.

"I swear to god you weren't this chatty when we were at the training camp." Eagle muttered.

"It's not like you gave me the chance to be." Alex shot back, quickly. "What was it you called me again? Double-o-nothing?"

Wolf flushed. "To be fair, Cub, that was more my fault than theirs…"

"Yeah, but you've apologised." Alex pointed out. "This lot haven't."

"Christ, if you'd just wanted an apology, you could have asked, kid!" Eagle told him, exasperated.

"If I'd just wanted an apology, I _would _have asked." Alex said, quietly. "But, I wanted an apology that you actually _meant_."

"That's something I've always wondered." Snake interrupted, his voice thoughtful. "What were you training with us for, anyway?"

"I had to – investigate something. For MI6." Alex evaded, rather unsubtly, but they let it go at that. He looked at them for a long moment. "So." He said, slowly. "What are you doing here?"

"We're just – trying to sort a few things out." Eagle told him. "Because, one minute Wolf is our team leader, and the next thing we know, he's leaving the SAS and going to join MI6 as the partner of some kid."

"Oh, thanks." Alex said, with a heavy trace of sarcasm. "But that doesn't tell me why you're here _now_."

"We wanted to have another look at you." Snake said, without a trace of artifice. "We figured that there must be some reason for Wolf to decide that he wanted to be your partner."

"Again, I feel so flattered." Alex said, sharply. "Look, do you want to stop with the veiled insults? Because then we can all accept that you think I'm a liability, that Wolf's mad to even consider partnering me, and that I'm going to get him killed."

"You don't tiptoe around, do you, kid?" Fox said, amusement clear in his tone. Alex turned stony eyes on him.

"It all depends on the situation. With you, you wouldn't get it if I talked in hints and suggestions." They winced. "With Scorpia, on the other hand, they'll pick up on the slightest inflections, so I got pretty good at 'tiptoeing', as you put it."

"Right, so you think we're thick, do you?" Eagle said, looking at him, hard.

Alex met his stare calmly. "I'm giving you as much credit as you're giving me." He said, quietly. "I'm through with giving people the benefit of the doubt. I did that before, and they tried to kill me three times – and that's not counting the two times they tried to kill me _before_ they recruited me."

There was a long silence, until Jack came down. On seeing the other men, she paused in the doorway, looking them over carefully. "Who're you?" she said, part suspicious, part neutral, nodding at Wolf.

"This is my team." Wolf told her, quietly. "Well… ex-team, I guess." He amended, fairly. Fox scowled at that. "That's Snake, that's Eagle, and the glaring one is Fox."

Jack treated Fox to an especially sweet smile. "Hallo." She nodded at him, and Wolf smirked as the scowl slid off Fox's face, to be replaced by a faintly ashamed expression.

Alex smiled at her, rather awkward still at having these men in his house. "Would you like a coffee?" he offered. She nodded, and he stood to get her a mug, while she drew up a seat at the table.

"So, I hope that you're not here to make life difficult for Alex." She said, her voice carrying only the faintest hint of a threat. "Because, trust me when I tell you that he's got enough people doing that without amateurs like you coming along to give it a go."

They all looked as ashamed as Fox did by the time she'd finished speaking.

Wolf was the first to stand, after a long, extremely uncomfortable pause. "Well, I think that everything's been said that we needed to say. Cub, I'll see you on Monday, OK? For our training. Miss Starbright, nice to see you."

He all but pushed the other three men out of the door, forcing them out. Alex sighed once they'd gone, and looked at Jack, tiredly.

"It might be really good having Wolf as a partner." He told her, quietly. "But, he comes with some really bad downsides."

* * *

Monday was just as much fun as Alex had been expecting. Although the furore around him had died down a little, he was still getting for too much attention for his liking, and although Wolf was still there, he was only with Alex so much now. Alex couldn't say that he missed the man hanging around at the back of his lessons, but he did wish he had the man's gift for intimidation.

Finally, though, the school day ended – Alex had fielded at least seventy questions, and was feeling rather frazzled as he escaped out the gates – and he headed, with Wolf an ever present, if rather silent, companion, over to the Royal and General Bank.

There, they were met by an earnest, eager looking man who took them down to the basement, where they found various high-tech looking classrooms, and even, in one instance, a live firing range.

"On Mondays, you'll be learning languages with me, Mr. Rider, Mr. San Luca." The man told them, voice soft and friendly. "Chinese, specifically. You have me again on Fridays. As for the other days, I've got a timetable to give you." Alex resisted the urge to roll his eyes – trust MI6 to come up with a timetable for his 'spy' lessons – but Wolf nodded, seriously.

The two-hour lesson was uneventful, as they learned a few basic phrases, had their accents rigorously worked on by the man – Terence Ashley – and learnt to recognise some of the more basic symbols. He wanted them to be able to recognise them all for a short test that Friday, and set them to learning it all as 'homework'. Alex sighed. Just what he needed, more homework.

He and Wolf parted with a brief 'see you tomorrow', and Alex headed back to Chelsea on his own, semi-willingly repeating the Chinese phrases to himself. It didn't seem all that hard, but then, as the man had said, this was the extremely basic stuff.

Over the past week or so, his life had changed so drastically, that Alex was having a hard time catching up with it. He just wished he could work out whether this change was for better – or for much, much worse.

* * *

And, this was supposed to be the last chapter. It's not, quite. It'll probably end in about two chapters time, when they get given their first assignment together.

And then, ladies and gentlemen, TEH SEQUEL!!!

Lol.

ami xxx


	13. Chapter 13

And here it is. The final instalment of _An Object Lesson_. (twinkles away a tear) My goodness, it's finally over.

I was going to split this into two bits, so I wouldn't have to end it on lucky 13 - 14's me lucky number, y'see :D - but then I couldn't be bothered, so you got a lump sum. As it were.

This is dedicated to my dear and wonderful friend **Von**, because - well, because she's dear and wonderful, of course (grin) - but also because it's her birthday!! (confetti shower) (sings) happy BIRTHDAY dear Vo-o-n... happy birthday to you!!

Ahem.

Right... enjoy the last chapter, folks!!

DISCLAIMER: They're holding out pretty well, over there at Walker Books - but I'll wear them down in the end, you see if I don't!

...maybe?

* * *

"How much karate have you done, Mr. Rider?" the instructor asked, face neutral as he looked at Alex.

Alex paused, glancing at Wolf. "I've been learning since I was six." He said, slowly. "Do you need to know my grade?"

"That would be helpful, thank you."

"Second Dan." He glanced at Wolf. "But it doesn't often help me when I'm up against someone bigger than me. If they're expecting an attack, there's often not a lot that I can do."

The instructor nodded, giving him a sharp, considering look. "We can rectify that." He nodded. "Judo is particularly useful for smaller fighters." He turned to Wolf. "And you?"

"Same Dan as Alex." He said, quietly. "Plus the techniques we were taught in the SAS."

"Can you teach those to Alex?"

Wolf didn't even need to glance at his partner first. "Yes." He said, without hesitation.

"That would be helpful then." The man looked them both over. "I think…" he paused. "You'll both benefit from learning some Judo; and it would be useful for you to learn how to fight as a team, rather than against each other. When are your usual classes?"

"Mine are on Mondays, eight till nine." Wolf said, casually. "But I can't often go, so it doesn't really matter, for me."

"Fridays, eight till nine." Alex shrugged. "I don't think my teacher would be surprised if I didn't turn up – last six months, I've hardly been there at all – but I'd like to go if I still can."

The instructor – who had introduced himself as 'Phil', with a look that promised retribution if they even thought of calling him anything other than 'sir' – nodded. "Go when you can; extra practice is always good." He paused, thinking. "Fine. I can schedule a two sets of individual lessons for you; one, for you to start learning Judo, the other simply for practice. I think it would be useful for you to come to one of the 'open' sessions, to get some practice fighting as a team before you're put in the field."

Wolf nodded seriously, and Alex followed his lead. "So, when are these 'open' sessions?"

"The next one is tomorrow, at six. If you can't make that one, the one after will be Friday, at seven. I'll have someone send you a message about your private sessions." He all but turned away, the dismissal obvious in his voice.

"Thank you." Wolf nodded, perfunctorily at him, and led the way out of the room.

"Pompous git." Alex muttered, when they were in the elevator.

"Respect, Cub."

"Needs to be earned, Wolf."

"You have real issues with authority, you know that?"

"It's been said." Alex agreed, dryly. There was a long pause. Finally, Alex broke it, saying, "When – or what – is our next lesson?"

Wolf glanced at him as the lift came to a stop. "It's tomorrow, Cub."

"Right. What is it? And what time is it?"

"Why don't you know already?"

"Because I've had other things to do, like, go and have someone poke through my head and tell me that I have 'deep seated self-worth issues', and suchlike. Oh, and I have homework to be doing."

Wolf shook his head. "I should have known that, I guess." He sighed. "Y'know, sometimes, it's _far_ too easy to forget that you're not an adult. We have rifle shooting tomorrow, at four thirty. And then, I guess, one of these 'open sessions' for martial arts, at six."

Alex grinned, suddenly. "You still going to be in school?"

"Yes." He was just a few notches off 'petulant'. "Not as a bodyguard anymore, it's for 'bonding', or some shit like that." He shrugged. "Only 'bonding' I can do with you while you're in school is helping you with your homework. And I am _not_ doing those crappy worksheets with you. I'm your partner, not your parent."

"Sure." Alex grinned. "You could always ask the teachers if you could help out with their lessons. I mean – did you get a degree? Or, d'you have any particular skill area, apart from – well, killing people?"

Wolf glared down at him, pressing the button to call the lift. "Of course I have skill areas." He said, firmly.

"Like what?" Alex pressed, interested.

"I took Chemistry with French at Aberdeen." He told him, voice quelling.

"Excellent!" Alex said, cheerfully.

Wolf took a few moments to think this response over, and said, warily, "Cub, what're you planning?"

Alex just grinned at him as the lift arrived on the ground floor. "Nothing!" he flung over his shoulder. "See you tomorrow!"

* * *

When Wolf arrived at school the next morning, and located his partner – he'd been given a copy of Alex's timetable, so it hadn't exactly been hard – he found that things had changed.

Alex's first class – French – generally passed easily enough for him; he would sit there, reading something like a text on new nerve poisons, or stealth planes, or something equally fascinating and masculine, and making notes in the notebook he carried round with him, while Alex suffered through the class. He had noticed that his partner found both French and Spanish ridiculously easy, but that was the sum total of his involvement with the class.

Today, however, Alex was waiting for him, expression smug. Wolf had time to give him one glance, before the teacher was talking to him.

"Mr. Alvarez…" she began, using the false name the teachers had been given for him, both to protect his identity and to get him used to answering to a different name, "Alex tells me that you took a degree in French?"

Wolf paused, before saying, reluctantly, "Yes…?"

The teacher – a kindly middle-aged lady with a will of iron, Miss Black – beamed at him. "Then, I was wondering. It's _so_ difficult to give the children any real oral practice, and they've got their end of year exams coming up – how would you feel about taking a few of them off at a time, for some practice?"

One of the other little brats smothered a laugh. "I'm sure he's _brilliant_ at oral – practice. Army, y'know, and all that…" He whispered, just loud enough that Wolf heard him. A couple of the other kids laughed, but most of the class was too busy being watching Wolf nervously to even think about it.

Wolf glared at him, and noted, with a faint hint of pride, that the boy suddenly looked nervous. Smoothing his face, he gave Miss Black a taut smile, and nodded. "I'd be delighted to help." He said, and gave Alex a look which promised retribution. Unlike the other boy, his partner just grinned back at him.

* * *

At the end of the lesson, Wolf made a beeline for Alex, easily cutting through the other students. Grabbing his arm, he growled, sounding more annoyed that he actually was, "What the hell was that about, Cub?"

Alex grinned irreverently up at him. "Well, I'm sure you were beginning to get bored, sat at the back of my classes… I was just – livening things up a bit for you."

"I didn't need livening up!" Wolf said, in a piercing hiss.

"Well, it was to help out with this bonding we're supposed to be doing." He paused, then added, casually, "You do realise that we're getting an audience, don't you?" Wolf gritted his teeth, resisting the urge to strangle him. "_And_ you're going to make me late for History." He paused. "Don't you have to go liaise with someone about security?"

Wolf let him go with a grimace which promised pay-back at some not-so-distant moment, and glowered at the other kids who were staring at them. He heard, with some satisfaction, Alex being ambushed with questions as he made his – unimpeded – way down the corridor.

* * *

After History – one of the few classes which Alex had without Wolf – Alex made his way through Latin, fending off questions in the corridors between classes, and trying not to say anything that he knew he wasn't allowed to. Somehow, when he said that something was classified, no one paid attention. Wolf never seemed to have that problem.

He made sure that he headed to Spanish a little bit before the end of break, in order to have a quick word with his teacher. After all, Wolf spoke fluent Spanish, as well as French – and there was no reason why one teacher should benefit from an impromptu teaching aide when another didn't.

Wolf knew the moment he got to the classroom that his partner had planned something. He was early – intentionally so, as he wasn't supposed to be drawing any more attention to himself than was necessary – and normally it would have been just him and the teacher. But Cub was there, grinning smugly, and he just knew that the little brat had something planned.

"Cub, what are you…" he began, before the bell went, and students started trickling into the classroom, and the teacher called him over.

"Mr. Alvarez, Alex tells me that you are a native Spanish speaker?" she smiled, rather awkwardly. "I suppose your name should have given it away, but there are so many naturalised Spanish people living in England, that I rather assumed…"

Wolf sent a glare at Alex, who shrugged as if to say, 'who, me?', and turned back to the teacher. "Yes, that's right." He said, deliberately laconic, all too aware of all the other kids staring at them – those who weren't pestering Alex with questions. It was truly amazing how now, even after a fortnight or so, the interest in Alex – and, to a lesser degree, himself – hadn't died down at all.

"Well, the thing is, Mr. Alvarez, I was rather wondering – you see, because Spanish isn't available for students in here until the year before they start preparing for the GCSEs, they don't get to hear much… and so, I was just wondering if you wouldn't mind just – talking to the class in Spanish. Just to get them used to hearing it. If you don't mind, of course…?"

She was beginning to babble, and Wolf was torn. He couldn't, in all politeness, refuse such a simple request, but the urge to do so was almost overwhelming. "Very well." He nodded, rather tersely. "Is there any particular topic you would like me to talk about?"

She shook her head, quickly. "No, not at all! Just – anything. Things you would talk about every day."

Wolf gave her a slightly resigned look, watching as her eyes went wide as she realised what she had just left the class open to – but by the time she had thought to give him a set topic, he had already started speaking.

"_When trying to enter a guarded building, there are two methods which can be followed_," he began, in rapid Spanish. Alex glanced quickly around the classroom; Wolf had lost nearly half the class by the time he got to 'guarded'. "_Firstly, of course, reconnaissance must be done; and, depending on how well armed the enemy is, and how many men they have, storming the building is often the most successful._" Alex frowned a little at that. "_It has the benefit of not only being quick, it is also a decisive move…_"

"_Which gets people needlessly killed and draws unnecessary attention to yourself._" He broke in, also in Spanish, in scant deference to his teacher.

"_Not if you're numerically superior to your opponent – and if you're SAS._" Wolf pointed out with a frown.

"_It still puts people in unnecessary danger. I suppose that's the method favoured by the SAS_?" he added, sarcastically, watching with faint interest as Wolf's frown darkened. "_What's this other method, then_?"

"_The Trojan Horse method. More risk, less certainty, smaller initial force – greater likelihood of initial failure, and therefore failure of the whole mission.._"

"_If your insiders have been properly briefed, there should be no chance of failure – and, if it _does_ pull off, you've got more intel, and therefore better means to implement the surprise of your attack._"

"_Surprise isn't always useful, Alex. Most of these people are such jumpy bastards, they've planned against every eventuality, and they're not going to be taken in by anything._"

The teacher looked like she was half-way to fainting, and the class was buzzing around the pair of them, though neither of them had noticed, completely focussed as they were on their half-private argument. Between them, all of the other students were picking up small snippets of the 'conversation', putting two and two together, and coming up with five.

"_Oh, and brute force is _so_ useful._" Alex said, half-sarcastic, half-earnest, leaning forwards, determined to prove his point to Wolf. "_And people can always be taken in by something; the lie just has to be good enough._" His teacher choked a little on that. "_Really, think about it for a second. You send maybe three to five people into this building, under the guise of maintenance workers, or government officials – not only can they scope out the place, but they can get rid of any alarm system, and, if they're lucky, they can get the doors open, or at least weaken their defences, to get the rest of the force in._"

"_Most of the people we're dealing with aren't going to be taken in by a uniform and a fake ID, Alex._"

"_So plan ahead. Your plan of doing a little bit of recon and then storming in leaves too many dead._"

The classroom definitely started buzzing at that.

"Um, I think that might be enough…" the teacher tried rather weakly, but neither of them were listening.

"_That depends how well trained your force is…_" Wolf argued.

"_Not much good if your enemy is as well trained as you are._" Alex pointed out, acidly. "_What if you were fighting Scorpia, heh?_"

"_Scorpia certainly aren't going to be taken in by the Trojan Horse method._"

"_Not if it's badly planned, no; but if Scorpia is your target, then you've probably been planning the assault for a while, no?_" Alex pointed out, calmly.

"_It's a fair point, but, for the most part, you're not attacking an organisation like Scorpia. With the SAS, you're dealing with some tough bastards, yes,_" The teacher let out a little squeak, "_But, most of the time, it's easier and less time consuming just to implement a full on attack. Recon, yes – but it doesn't need all that detailed planning your method would need._" Seeing that Alex was still looking sceptical, Wolf grabbed a piece of chalk, and drew a quick sketch on the board, "_Look, Cub – if you're attacking a building that has and exit, say, here_," he scribbled a quick 'door' on the rough sketch, "_And here… All you need to do is fix a perimeter so that no one escapes, and send in a double pronged attack, thus splitting their forces…_"

"_And splitting yours…_"

"I think that's enough now, thank you!" The teacher said, quickly, and rather shrilly, giving Alex a sharp, disapproving glance. He gave her a blank, innocent look in return, then met Wolf's equally sharp look.

"We'll finish this later." The older man said, firmly.

Alex returned the look squarely. "Damn right we will."

The teacher gave a nervous little laugh, and half-shooed Wolf away, saying, quickly, "Thank you. Maybe tomorrow, I could give you a more – well, a less… volatile subject to talk about? Like, your family?"

He nodded gravely, and the lesson continued. Afterwards, though, Alex was surrounded by people asking him about why he and Wolf had been talking about 'the best way to kill people' in the middle of a Spanish lesson.

The first few people, he attempted to set straight about what they had really been talking about; but he soon realised that no one was that interested in the truth, and let them believe what they wanted to.

Wolf, however, appeared maybe a minute later, having stayed behind momentarily to talk to the teacher, and he glowered silently over Alex's shoulder. That soon dispersed the little crowd around him; but Alex was aware of the still-rather-awed glances following him.

"God, Cub." Wolf said, shaking his head. "Could you try and persuade your fan club to be a _little_ less rabid?"

Alex sighed, and ignored the question. "We've got Biology." He told the man.

"No, _you've_ got Biology." Wolf pointed out. "_I_ have a chance to plot my revenge."

"Terrified, I'm sure." Alex shot back, tartly, just as Tom appeared next to him.

"OK, Alex?" he asked, with his quick, easy grin.

"Yeah." He grinned back. "Roping Wolf into all of my lessons; it's fun."

"For him." Wolf muttered, darkly.

* * *

"Today, class, we're going to continue with our theme of the human body. For this lesson, we're going to finish of our work on the skeletal structure, and maybe start on the Nervous System, or the muscles, if we get the chance… Oh, and please remember that I'm going to be away as from tomorrow, and this class will be taken by a substitute teacher until this time next week."

Alex was only half listening to the teacher, watching with interest as Wolf, next to him at the back of the classroom, scribbled something down on his ever-present notebook. Finally, the man ripped the piece of paper off, and handed it surreptitiously to Alex.

"_You should pay attention in biology – especially about the Nervous System. Good for finding out pressure points._"

Alex frowned, and scribbled back, "_It's easier to pay attention when you're not passing notes to me; if I get into trouble because of this, I'm blaming you._" he paused, then added, "_And why pressure points_?"

Wolf read it through, and frowned. "_You're not going to get caught – if we are, I'll buy you a burger. And pressure points're useful if you need to get information out of someone in a hurry – didn't MI6 teach you that_?"

"_Obviously not_." He wrote back, the sarcasm obvious, even from his scrawled note.

Wolf started on a new sheet of paper, and Alex watched as his partner outlined the best way to get information out of somebody quickly, generally by brute force, with a quick postscript added that '_these were techniques the SAS used sometimes, and he would teach Alex later_'.

Reading through the list, unable to get the grin off his face from the sheer surrealism of the situation, he couldn't help but hope that there weren't going to be any practical demonstrations in his 'lessons'.

"Mr. Rider," His biology teacher, Mr. Martins, said sharply, and he looked up quickly, smoothing his face into innocence, "Would you care to share with the class exactly what you find so amusing?"

Alex paused, glancing down at the piece of paper and then back up at his teacher. "Alright then." He shrugged, and next to him, Wolf groaned a little. "Firstly, Wolf, you owe me a burger," Mr. Martin's eyebrows raised, "And – well. 'The best way to get information from somebody quickly depends on three things. One, what equipment you've got – where you are, and so on. Two, how much stronger they are than you. Three, how much time you have to get the information." His teacher's eyebrows now seemed to be in pitched battle with his hair line, "One of quickest and easiest ways to get your point across in a hurry is to slam a guy's hand in the nearest set of drawers. Hurts way more than it looks and they'll do pretty much anything to make sure it doesn't happen again; and it gets across the idea that you're serious like nobod-"

"Yes, thank you, Alex." His teacher said, sharply.

Half the class were giggling quietly as he read the note out, voice calm and casual, and the other half was staring at him, wide eyed and horrified. His teacher was simply looking disapproving, and Wolf, next to him, was practicing his death-glare. Tom was grinning widely, and, as he sat down, whispered,

"You get such _interesting_ mail, Alex."

"Mr. Harris, that's quite enough from you." Mr. Martins said, firmly. "You, Mr. Rider, will write me a side on why you should pay attention in Biology."

Alex shot Wolf a look, and was hard-pressed to suppress his grin as he nodded, penitently.

* * *

The lesson was over quickly enough, and, after giving them their homework, and reminding them about the substitute teacher once more, Martins let them go to lunch. Alex was pestered with questions, still – he, like Wolf, had been hoping that all the interest would have started to die down a little by now, but, apparently, the novelty hadn't worn off.

One of the girls in the top year, one of the beautiful-but-arrogant girls, even asked Wolf whether he had a girlfriend, with much giggling and blushing and looking over at her friends on another table. Wolf himself had simply raised an eyebrow at her, skewered her with a piercing stare that went on for several seconds longer than was comfortable, and said, voice calm and very, very cool,

"If you want some little idiot who'll hold your hand, go and find a child your own age." He shrugged, dismissively. "I don't date arrogant little girls."

The girl had stared at him for a couple of seconds, eyes wide and shocked, face slowly flushing. Then, she fled back to her friends, lip trembling ominously.

Alex raised his eyebrow at the other man, shaking his head. Wolf himself shrugged again.

"What? She's the one who made an idiot out of herself."

* * *

The day, after that, passed relatively normally – or, normal for the way they'd come to expect schooldays to go. At four o'clock, Alex bid Tom a quick goodbye, and headed, with Wolf, to the 'Bank's' training facility, just off Hyde Park, for some marksmanship practice.

Though there were some sound-proofed firing ranges in the basement of the bank – mainly for assessment purposes, and the occasional practice, for those high-ranked enough to be given clearance – and they kept guns down there, the main training and practice facilities were in the large, nondescript building off Hyde Park, which had space for almost everything they needed. There was a gym, an Olympic-sized swimming pool, a couple of dojos and various other facilities. The first time Alex had come here, about a week and a half ago, he had been torn between 'intimidated' and 'amazed'.

Now, he and Wolf headed down through to one of the ranges which had been reserved for them, where, they were told on entering, that the 'teacher' was waiting for them.

"Nick!" Alex exclaimed, surprised, on seeing the man waiting for them at the range.

The blond man smiled at him, giving Wolf a quick, considering glance. "Alex." He held out a hand, which Alex shook. "I don't suppose you brought that gun I gave you?"

Alex shook his head, ruefully. "I've, er…" he flushed a little. "I've just come from school – I couldn't risk taking it back in, you know?"

"Right, of course." Nick smiled at him, reassuringly. "Don't worry about it." He grinned. "I tell you, accounting for it was bloody difficult."

"Yeah." Alex nodded, awkwardly. "I'm sorry…"

"Don't worry." Nick shrugged it off.

"Alex." Wolf's voice was a little taut. "Care to introduce me?"

Alex shook himself mentally and nodded. "Yeah – sorry, Wolf. Wolf, this is Nick Martins. Nick, this is Wolf – er… James san Luca."

"Tim has told me about you." Nick nodded, holding his hand out to Wolf, expression markedly less warm than it had been a second ago.

"Tim?"

"Tim Smithers. Head of Q Section at MI6." Alex told him, quickly, and Wolf nodded.

"You _are_ green, aren't you?" Nick said, off-handedly, and turned away before Wolf had a chance to reply. Out of the corner of his eye, Alex saw his partner grit his teeth and take a deep, calming breath.

When Nick turned around, he was holding two shotguns. "I assume you both know how to use these?" he looked at Alex. "You'll probably mostly be sticking with handguns, but you'll need to know how to use these. I'm always being told that you lot need to be prepared for everything." He ended with a smile that didn't quite include Wolf.

Ignoring the tension between the two men, Alex nodded, and Nick got down to the more serious task of starting their practice, explaining what he wanted them to do each time, and telling both of them in no very uncertain terms that this was as much an assessment as anything else.

* * *

"I still can't believe that." Wolf said, but he was grinning a little as he said it, as they walked away from the training facility, a whole three hours later.

"Just because you don't like being beaten by a kid." Alex retorted, without heat, and Wolf shrugged, easily.

"Can you blame me? I mean, shit, Alex, I'm SAS, and I just got beaten at sharp shooting by a fourteen year old. It's a blow to my pride."

"I bet it is." Alex said, with a quick grin of his own. "But – I was trained by Scorpia, y'know? I did… I kinda had to be good. That's what they were teaching me to do; shoot to kill. You only get one shot, and – all that crap."

They walked in silence for a couple of minutes.

"Hey, Cub… fancy that burger I owe you?" Wolf asked, lazily.

Alex shook his head, ruefully. "Can't." he told him, voice tinged a little with regret. "I've got homework, and Jack would kill me." He paused. "You could come to mine for supper, Jack always cooks too much." He grinned. "Plus, I kind of owe _you_, for all that stuff I pulled today."

Wolf mock-frowned. "Damn straight." He rolled his shoulders, stretching out the muscles in his back, and thinking for a couple of seconds. "I might take you up on that. Has that American bloke – Walter, or whatever – is he still there?"

"Walker?" Alex shook his head. "No, he left." He grinned. "Why, was Wolfie scared of the big bad American?"

Wolf cuffed him round the head, absently. "Shut it, Cub."

"He did leave Jack his number, though… so, if you wanted to talk to him that badly…"

The cuff was a little harder the next time.

* * *

Wolf ate with them that night, but left shortly after helping with the washing up, when Alex said, regretfully, that he needed to do his homework for tomorrow.

Jack had been almost complimentary about him, saying, rather grudgingly, that he did at least have good manners 'when he chose to use them'. Alex, who recognised all too well the signs of the beginnings of one of his friend-come-guardian's crushes, smiled softly, and suggested that she ring Walker. Jack threw a sofa cushion at him.

* * *

When Wolf met Alex the next morning, he frowned a little on seeing his partner looking so washed out and tired.

"Bad night?"

"Lot of homework." Alex sighed, dragging a hand over his face. "I was up kind of late."

"How late?"

Alex shrugged. "Till about – two?"

"You're insane, Cub."

"Well, it's not like I can do it any other time, is it?" he sighed. "I just – I had to get it done, y'know? Otherwise it'll just build up and up and up…"

Tom bounced up to them, face enthusiastic. "Alex!" he grinned. "How're you?"

"Knackered, thanks, you?" he paused. "Actually, have you done the Biology homework?"

Tom gave him a look of undiluted scorn. "Don't be thick, we've got a sub. teacher. Why bother?"

Alex groaned. "_Bugger_. I _knew_ there was a reason I didn't have to do it!"

* * *

Wolf was on tenterhooks by the time the first lesson – Chemistry – started. He'd managed to lose sight of Alex beforehand, and he just knew that the kid was going to have got him somehow roped into this lesson, just as he had with Spanish and French and – inadvertently, admittedly – Biology the day before. Sure enough, when he appeared in the classroom as the bell rang, the teacher, a thin, rather sour-faced woman, gave him terse smile, and said,

"Mr. Alvarez. Rider tells me that you have a Chemistry degree?" Wolf nodded, and managed not to send the evil eye Alex's way. The teacher frowned. "That can't have been much use in your chosen line of work. What use did you have for your skills in the army?"

Wolf shrugged. "Oh, we used them to kill people, mostly." He said, easily.

The teacher didn't even flinch. "Oh, really?" Wolf nodded. "Would you care to demonstrate?"

Afterwards, Wolf would never know what made him say it, but his mouth – apparently going it solo – said, calmly. "Is there anyone in particular you'd like killed?"

The thin lips twitched a little. "It's far too long a list to get through in this lesson. I was thinking more in abstract, if you wouldn't mind."

He paused. "Are you sure it's a wise idea to teach fourteen year olds how to make bombs?"

Her eyes lingered on Alex for a couple of seconds – he returned her gaze calmly, if rather curiously. "Apparently, there's at least one fourteen year old in the room who needs to know."

Wolf inclined his head a little in agreement. "True." He said, carefully. "Maybe – maybe I could just teach him, and he could demonstrate to the class, to prove that he's taken it in?"

She shook her head. "If Rider is going to waste a lesson, the rest of his classmates may as well do the same." She said, rather tartly.

Wolf nodded, slowly. "Alright, then…" he paused. "A smoke bomb might be the least dangerous to demonstrate."

"The stage is yours." She told him, expression ironical.

"Oh, thank you." he muttered. Going to the front bench, he searched for the right ingredients, ignoring her miffed expression when he grabbed a couple of sachets from her stash of sugar under the desk. "Right. Hi." He paused. "It's, um," Clearing his throat, he ignored the ridiculous part of him that wanted to be nervous, and continued, more confidently, "Scarily, it's easy enough to make a smoke bomb." There were a couple of smirks at that. Wolf _really_ didn't think this was a good idea. "All you need is some plain table sugar, some baking powder, and some potassium nitrate, or saltpetre. Also, some aluminium foil, and something to heat it in…"

* * *

"…And that's how you make a smoke bomb." He told them, with a quick grin. Glancing at the teacher, he added, "I don't suppose I'm allowed to set it off in here?"

"No, thank you, Mr. Alvarez." She told him, rather coolly. "Thank you for the fascinating demonstration."

"No problem." He told her, easily. "Any time. Next time, if you'd like, I could show you how to _actually_ kill someone."

"I don't think my students need any demonstrations in how to damage each other in their chemical practicals." She replied, stiffly, just as the bell rang.

Wolf collared Alex in the resulting confusion, saying, firmly, "No more roping me into any of your classes, alright, Cub? Every time you get me involved from here on in, I will _hurt_ you. Got me?"

The little brat had the effrontery not to look scared. Wolf glared.

* * *

They managed to get through the day almost calmly until after lunch. With only two more lessons left, Biology happened.

The substitute teacher was one of the new Biology teachers the school had just employed, so he had a rough idea of what Wolf was. Alex suspected that he didn't have a full idea, or, if he did, was young enough to show that he found the entire thing either fascinating or daunting, because he kept shooting the man half-nervous, half-intrigued glances.

On the other hand, Wolf had that effect normally, so it was entirely possible that that had nothing to do with it.

He was a good teacher, though, even if he was rather nervous and over-earnest.

"Mr. Martins has told me that you've started on Nerves and Muscles, is that right?" there were a few murmurs of assent. "That's excellent." He smiled. "Right, well, I've prepared a few sheets for you…"

The lesson was uneventful until about halfway through, after he'd explained about the five stages of muscles response, and all the rest of it, and was half way through trying to explain the way muscles and nerves were arranged in the human torso.

"This would be much easier if I had a diagram to show you." he smiled, rather nervously. "Of course, the best way to teach you would be if I had a live, or full-sized model to show you on…"

Next to Alex, Tom grinned, leaning across to him and whispering,

"They should use Wolf – bet they could pick out every muscle on the damn chart." Alex stifled a laugh, and the teacher looked at him, quizzically,

"What's so funny?" He asked, sounding genuinely interested.

Alex flushed, and hesitated. Finally, he said to Wolf, in rapid-fire Spanish, "_It was just Tom and me, mucking around. He kind of – well, he suggested that you could be the life-sized model_."

It was Wolf's turn to flush. "That's classified." He told the teacher, rather roughly. The man was visibly taken aback.

Tom smirked a little. "Sorry, sir – it was my fault. I just thought – well…" he shrugged, "Since Mr. Alvarez's here, he could act as a model, for you to show us the muscles and nerves…"

There was a moment of deadly silence, and Alex could _feel_ Wolf waiting for the other man to laugh it off – but the substitute teacher, Mr. Allenby, was giving him a wide-eyed hopeful look. He frowned, but the man didn't let up.

"Well, if Mr. Alvarez really doesn't mind…"

He paused, and looked at Tom. "That's unfortunate. See, now I have to kill you."

Allenby gave a nervous little laugh. "Mr. Alvarez…"

"He just doesn't want to take his shirt off…" Someone muttered from the other side of the classroom, and Wolf glared back at them without moving.

"Wolf." Alex muttered. "No one's making you do it, you can just say…"

"Oooh… pussy-whipped." The same voice piped up, and Wolf's glare darkened. Standing, and handing Alex the notebook he'd been scribbling in, he pulled his T-shirt off, and folded it, neatly and deliberately, and putting it on Alex's desk.

The class was utterly, utterly silent as he made his way up to the front, and while Mr. Allenby – the only other person in the room who was apparently unaffected by the whole thing – pointed out the different muscles and the structure of the nerves in the human torso. Alex noted, with amusement, that a couple of the girls were actually almost drooling.

* * *

"I didn't do _anything_ that time!" Alex protested quickly, once the class was over, and Wolf – once again fully clothed – was stood, glowering at him quietly. Tom had wisely chosen to disappear, and Alex had been left alone with a seriously pissed off ex-SAS.

Life wasn't looking good. Or long, for that matter.

Wolf appeared to consider that for a second or so. "That's true." He conceded, reluctantly. Alex stared. "What?"

"Did you just – were…" he shook his head. "Wow. You were just lenient."

"That wasn't lenient, that was fair."

"Yeah, because you're the _poster boy_ for 'fair', right?" he said, snarkily, as he led the way out of the classroom.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Wolf asked, hotly.

"Wolf, you bullied me for a fortnight at the Brecon Beacons because I was a kid. That's not exactly text book 'fair' is it?"

Wolf let that one go in silence. There was, after all, nothing he could really say in his defence. "Fine." He said, rather gruffly. "What have you got next?"

Alex thought for a second. "PE." He said, finally. "Last lesson of the day."

Wolf nodded, and they parted outside the changing rooms. Wolf grinned to himself, and headed to the gym to have a word with Alex's PE teacher.

* * *

When he got to the gym, it was Alex's turn to be worried, as Wolf met his eyes with a smirk that could only be described as evil.

"Sit." The teacher ordered, quietly. "Right, you lot – today, we're going to be playing dodge-ball; I'm going to divide you up into teams, and the team who wins doesn't have to run three laps of the gym at the end of the lesson. Rider, you're with Mr. Alvarez."

Alex shot Wolf a venomous glare as he headed over to him, the rest of his class watching eagerly.

"What's this about then?"

Wolf shrugged easily, leading him over to one corner of the room. "Well, there's no point you playing bloody _dodge-ball_, is there, Cub? You might as well use this period to build up your fitness. I just pointed that out to your teacher." He grinned. "Nice guy. Saw my point immediately."

"Right. So, this has _nothing_ to do with the fact that you had to take your shirt off in my Biology lesson."

"I'm shocked and hurt that you would think I could be so petty." Wolf told him, with another, wider, more evil grin. Alex groaned.

It started off almost easy – running laps of 'their' little part of the gym, stopping only to do sit-ups or press-ups, or crunches, as Wolf told him to; then they moved on to the harder things.

"We'll start with a basic warm up – then, sprints. After that, we'll see – but I want to spar with you before we go to a session with the Bank, get your measure, maybe teach you some of the techniques I learnt in the SAS, and now is as good a time as any."

Alex was wholly unsurprised, therefore, to find that, just a few seconds into his all-out fight with Wolf, that the entire gym was silent, watching them. Tired, sweaty and ever-so-slightly annoyed, Alex couldn't help but feel a little pissed off about that.

He aimed a knee-strike to Wolf's groin, and the other man twisted out of the way, but stepped into the punch he aimed at his jaw; the momentary distraction provided by that allowed him to kick at his knee, and, as Wolf stumbled, he sank a fist into his gut.

Wolf allowed himself to swear, once and violently, in Spanish, before forcing himself to forget the pain, and straighten. He was expecting the punch Cub immediately aimed at his face, and blocked it easily, with a hooking block; using his grip on the kid's wrist, he pulled him forward, onto his waiting knee – and then stopped.

"From here," he said, quietly, holding Cub in place, and pretending to ignore the wide-eyed stares from the rest of the little brats, "I could do a variety of things, depending on the circumstances. I could punch your kidneys in, wind you again, twist your neck – possibly breaking it – or I could stab you in the back, if I had a knife. Or I could do this." He switched his grip on Cub's wrist, and twisted his whole body around that point, sending Cub to the ground, winded. He knelt by him, putting one hand on his neck. "And from _here_, I could strangle you." he stood. "I win." He stood, offering Alex a hand, which, to his surprise, the boy took without trying to pull him down on top of him, which would have been very film-esque, but not very smart.

So he wasn't expecting Cub to sweep his legs from under him.

The kid grinned down at him. "I win."

He was gone before Wolf had a chance to retaliate.

* * *

Life went on like that for nearly a fortnight, during which Wolf was formally discharged – honourably – from the SAS, and enrolled at MI6, and Alex was given the details for his new status within the organisation; they were both started on an intensive training course, learning, at an accelerated pace, judo, Chinese, and some Russian – and Alex often got the impression that their 'teachers' were highly frustrated at having to fit their lessons in around his school day. They were both being taught 'correct procedure' for post-mission reports, and were having shooting 'practice' three times a week, two sessions of martial arts – 'just for practice' – along with various other ways of putting someone out of action, and, to Wolf's delight, getting information out of someone.

It took him nearly three weeks to work out that Alex was looking far the worse for wear.

* * *

It was a Saturday, and they'd been scheduled another Chinese lesson to 'get them up to scratch'. Wolf was willing to bet that their next mission was going to be in China somewhere.

He'd gone to Alex's house in Chelsea, as he'd arranged with the kid the day before; but when he knocked on the door, it was the red-headed housekeeper – Jo? Jackie? Something like that – who opened the door.

"Hi…" he said, awkwardly, "Is – um… is Alex around?"

She gave him a disapproving frown. "He's sick." She told him, shortly, her accent, as much as her attitude, grating on his nerves.

"Sick?" he repeated, dubiously. "How sick?"

"Sick, like he's running a fever, and can't think straight." She snapped. "I don't know what your precious," she seemed to suddenly realise that they were having this conversation effectively in the open, and lowered her voice to a venomous hiss, "Your precious MI6 have been thinking – sure, they _say_ that they're going to treat him properly; screw that, they've been working him into the ground!"

Wolf frowned. "What do you mean, 'working him into the ground'?"

"Come inside," she said, by way of an answer. "I'm not having this conversation on the doorstep."

He followed her into the kitchen, and hovered awkwardly in the doorway. "What's wrong with Cub? And, what do you mean about MI6…"

"It might have escaped your notice," she said, acidly, "But Alex is still in school, and he's still got a student's workload. And he's getting home at eight or nine at night _every night_, and he's still expected to do two or three hours of homework? After a full day of school? I'd like to see _you_ try that." She glared at him, and he shifted, rather uncomfortably. "He's trying to learn so much, he's got a near permanent headache – that, or he's swallowing painkillers like they're going out of fashion _for fun_, and I'll tell you now that Alex just doesn't do that - and he can't sleep at night… I'm not surprised that he's having a damn breakdown!"

Wolf stared. "A breakdown?"

She sighed, flopping suddenly into one of the chairs. "Yeah." She shrugged. "Well, no, not exactly a _breakdown_, not strictly. But – he's not sick, you know? He's exhausted. He's been runnin' on empty for the last few days, at the least."

Wolf nodded, slowly. "Right." He paused for a second, then said, cautiously, "Can I see him?"

She waved him off, expression tired. "Go for it. First door on the left, first floor." She bit her lip for a moment, then said, rather reluctantly, "And – I'm sorry for tearing you out just now. It just – it gets me so angry, you know? All this shit that MI6 pull with Alex, and he's – he still gives them everything. He deserves better."

"Yeah. He does." Wolf agreed, quietly, and, when she didn't seem about to say anything else, turned and headed up the stairs to his partner's room.

Alex was asleep when he opened the door, pale face flushed, and somehow thinner than Wolf remembered it being yesterday. He didn't wake him, but headed back downstairs, bidding Jacqueline, or whoever, a quick, rather terse goodbye, and heading straight over to the Bank.

* * *

When Alex saw Wolf again, on Monday, the man was looking even grimmer than usual, and greeted him with a faintly worried,

"How are you?"

Alex frowned. "Fine. What did I miss?"

"You're fine? Because you still look like shit, Cub."

"Oh, thanks." Alex told him, sarcastically. "I'm fine – just a bit tired. Nothing important, anyway. What did I miss, in the lesson?"

"Cancelled it." Wolf told him, shortly. "There isn't any point me learning things that they're just going to have to go over again for you, so I cancelled it." He paused. "I've – had a word with a couple of people." He began, rather awkwardly. "And they've agreed to let off a bit, with all the lessons, and sessions, and things we're supposed to turn up with. Give you a chance to – get healthy before they send us on any missions."

Alex stared at him. "You did _what_?"

"I had a word with some people."

"You make it sound like you had Blunt killed." Alex attempted to a joke to hide his utter shock.

"Not exactly, no." Wolf allowed himself a small smile. "I just pointed out that they couldn't expect you to do well in any assignments we were given if you were half-dead from all their training."

Alex baulked a little at that. "I wasn't 'half-dead'!" he protested.

"Whatever you say, Cub." Wolf shot back, and the heavy atmosphere lightened considerably.

Ten days later, Alex got the phone call he'd been expecting for nearly a month.

"Mr. Rider?" a polite, trained secretary, from her voice, who had very little idea what kind of a person she was speaking to.

"Yes?"

"We were wondering if you could come to the Bank. Friday, four o'clock?"

He nodded, though he knew that she couldn't see him. "Fine, thank you."

"Thank you, sir." She rang off, and left him listening to the dial tone and wondering what – and where – he was going to be sent into this time.

* * *

Next Friday found Alex and Wolf in Alan Blunt's office, being briefed for their next assignment. Blunt was as bland and to-the-point as usual, despite having apparently been inches from enforced retirement, but Mrs. Jones seemed to have changed and relaxed, at least a little.

"The assignment itself is simple." Blunt told them, sounding almost bored by the whole procedure. "You're being sent in to get information about a drug ring; anything you can find out, we want to know."

"Why's it so important?" Alex asked, and pretended not to see the frown Wolf sent him for interrupting a 'superior'.

"Obviously, the drugs they're sending into Britain are a problem." Mrs. Jones told him, quietly, "But, we've got reason to believe that they've got contacts in the British government who are covering for them, and helping them – we want to know who they are so that we can – weed them out."

Alex nodded, sitting back in his chair, giving Wolf the chance to ask any questions, if he wanted, or for Blunt to continue.

"Your cover is simple enough, you'll find it in this brief," Mrs. Jones handed each of them a blank manila folder, while Blunt talked, "And Smithers will fit you up with all the equipment you'll need. If possible, we want you to get the information back to us before the elections." He gave each of them a long, searching look. "Any questions?"

"Where are we being sent?" Alex asked, quietly.

"South America. Quito, in Ecuador, specifically." Blunt told him, shortly. "Anything else?" A brief pause. "Thank you."

They both recognised the dismissal. As they headed out, Alex asked Wolf, half under his breath, "Nervous?"

"About having to trust you with my life? Oh, hell yes, Cub."

"I meant, about the assignment."

"Nah – piece of cake, right?"

Alex flinched, glad that he'd caught the undercurrent of irony in his partner's words. "Yeah, piece of cake." He agreed, sarcastically. "And – Wolf? Try not to get yourself killed."

"Try not to make me want to kill you, alright?" The man shot back.

Alex offered him a quick grin. For the first time, he thought he might actually be – well, not _looking forward_ to an assignment exactly – but not dreading it.

Things had definitely changed.

* * *

FIN

* * *

God. Long winded little sod, aren't I?

Right. The sequel. It's in the works, I'm planning it, and I want to know - how many people don't mind/would like it to be slash?

By slash, I dont' mean that Alex and Wolf are going to be having hardcore sex on his fifteenth birthday. This would be decent, built-up, _legal _sex; I think it could work quite well. Any takers?

OK, well, that's it for this story. I hope you enjoyed!

LOL, ami. xxx


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